


Equinox

by lilyconrad



Category: Star Wars Prequel Trilogy, Star Wars: The Clone Wars (2008) - All Media Types
Genre: Angst, Angst and Fluff and Smut, Angst with a Happy Ending, Bottom Anakin Skywalker, Denial of Feelings, Dom/sub, Drama, Just Kiss Already You Idiots, M/M, Murder, NSFW, Sex, Sith Anakin, Sith Anakin and Sith Obi-Wan, Sith Obi-Wan, Slow Burn, Top Obi-Wan Kenobi, gothic horror, obikin, tie me up baby
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-05-02
Updated: 2018-07-08
Packaged: 2018-10-26 19:33:45
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 19
Words: 95,903
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/10793313
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/lilyconrad/pseuds/lilyconrad
Summary: "One impulse from a vernal woodMay teach you more of man,Of moral evil and of good,Than all the sages can."- William WordsworthDuring the Clone Wars, Obi-Wan and Anakin crash on a remote planet and take shelter in the ruins of a grand estate only to find they are not alone.





	1. In a Darkened Wood

**Author's Note:**

  * For [DreamingMoonlight](https://archiveofourown.org/users/DreamingMoonlight/gifts).



> A gift for DreamingMoonlight and inspired by her prompt: "Sith!Obi-Wan and Sith!Anakin are accidentally tossed into the canon universe and meet Jedi!Obi-Wan and Jedi!Anakin, who now have to deal with all the weirdness and feelings it dredges up when those versions of themselves are in a relationship and maybe aren't as different from their Jedi selves as they'd like to think."
> 
> Hope you like it!

 

The crisp arc of an icy world lay silent in space, its perfect sunlit curve marred by a single smoking line drawn in haze and blaster fire behind a tiny ship rocketing up from its surface, desperately attempting to outrace the larger, slower vessel shooting at it.

Bolts crackled across the bow of the scout ship, red lightning flashing in bright pulses against the black and stars, and a second arc sent a violent shudder through its frame and the two men frantically calling out numbers as their hands flew over the control boards in front of them.

“Another hit, shields failing! Thirty seconds to hyperdrive activation,” Anakin Skywalker shouted over the creaking groan of the ship as he forced it into a hard bank away from the pulses of fire, blue eyes narrowed and heart pounding with a perverse mix of glee and fear. The Force swirled around him in a frantic, jagged pulse almost as blinding as the lasers ripping past the cockpit window.

“Coordinates locked in and confirmed. Rerouting power from non-essential systems for initial jump,” Obi-Wan Kenobi replied in a tense mutter as he jabbed a series of buttons and the lights above them dimmed, not daring to look up at the wild spiral of stars he felt in his gut as Anakin forced them into a careening spin up and away from the monster of a ship gaining on them with every second. A box of something crashed to the floor further back in the ship, a dull thud followed by a dozen piercing shrieks as its contents skidded into the hall.

“Twenty seconds. Ten,” Anakin said, his wild grin fading into a frown of concentration as he swung the ship around in a barely controlled dive away from the ice planet hanging below and the ugly silhouette of their pursuer looming before it. “Five. Four. Three--”

Another sizzling roar rattled the ship and half a dozen alarms blared to life. “Two! One!”

Obi-Wan held his breath as he and Anakin punched in the final commands, the Force between them singing with desperate hope as the ship shuddered and hyperspace surged out to meet them. Blue and white washed over them in a lurch they felt in their bones, the laser fire instantly gone and only the persistent blare of the ship’s warning systems left to show the deadly race they had just run.

Collapsing back in his seat, Obi-Wan took a deep breath of relief before reaching forward to assess the damage on the systems readout that sat on his side of the control board and disable the alarms. “Life support within normal parameters. Short-range sensors offline. Comm looks like it took at least one hit. Hyperdrive fluctuating but still within normal parameters.”

Anakin laughed and nodded, hand shaking a bit with adrenaline as he patted the console in front of him. “Tough little ship. Aren’t you glad we stole this one instead of that other one they had sitting next to it?”

Obi-Wan ran a hand through his hair, pale hand even more so against the light auburn that sparked blue in the whirl of hyperspace outside, and gave a slight smile to Anakin. “You do have an eye for them.”

Anakin leaned back into his seat, letting out his own long sigh of relief as he did his best to release his excitement and anxiety into the Force. It was like digging a hole in sand but he tried anyway, the exercise giving him something to focus on so he wouldn’t jump up out of his harness and pace around the ship. “And you thought missions with me as a Knight would be boring. Haven’t had one like that yet!” he joked in an attempt to calm himself, tugging at a lock of the loose, dark curls resting just above his shoulder.

“Oh, no, I was never under that impression. In fact, I had a feeling what little sense you had was in that tiny braid. Now Force only knows what will eventually happen to us,” Obi-Wan said in mock disapproval, recognizing Anakin’s attempt to steady himself and reaching out with the weight of his own mind across their bond to help.

Anakin grinned at him, opening his mouth to fire back an equally dry remark when a powerful explosion rocked them against their harnesses so hard it almost knocked the breath out of him.

Sirens bellowed and for a moment nothing made sense: in a flash the hazy blue and white of hyperspace resolved into a strange split, half black and half sharp white swirls and swaths of green.

“Planet!” one of them screamed, though in the panic of the moment and the last touch of their bond before it shattered into instinct and fear they weren’t sure who said it. Anakin jerked the stabilizer levers back, a wave of Huttese curses tumbling out as he reached up and jabbed at the controls for the emergency braking system. “Get us on an arc out into orbit!”

Obi-Wan punched in commands but nothing happened, the planet racing up toward them like an avalanche of clouds and forests, oceans and ice caps. “Navi is offline!” he yelled, almost breathless from the movement of the ship as it slammed against the upper atmosphere and began to shake.

“Going too fast. Manual,” Anakin managed to grind out as the gravity well of the planet pulled them down in a relentless spiral through the first layers of clouds. There was no need for more words as his intent flashed across their bond, cold with grim determination: there was no chance of slowing and returning to a stable trajectory at this point so he would have to try to land it.

Obi-Wan did what he could, shutting off the alarms and power to the red tangle of light on the board that indicated the hyperdrive, the cabin going oddly, frighteningly silent save the harsh rasp of the wind along the ship and the click of controls as Anakin stared out across the rolling hills and lakes and green waves of trees looming up to swallow them.

 _Don’t let us die. Not today_ , Anakin begged the Force as fear rose up swift and sure as a flood.

The little ship, trailing smoke and wobbling wildly back and forth, rocketed along the tops of the trees to the injured whine of its engines as Anakin struggled to keep the ship level and Obi-Wan sat white-knuckled in his seat, unable to do anything but watch the forest reach out in hunger for them.

A sudden violent jerk snapped Anakin’s harness loose and he slammed his head against the ceiling overhead, collapsing bonelessly back into his seat and the ship lurching off-balance.

 _No! Padawan!_ was Obi-Wan’s last panicked, conscious thought before they tumbled into the embrace of the forest, too terrified to notice he’d reverted to a title Anakin had not borne for over a year.

Branches snapped and scraped along the bottom, smashing into the cockpit window in loud, dry smacks, and then with a vicious series of skipping jolts the ship mowed down trees and cut a deep gouge across the moist, fern-scattered earth left in shadows by the canopy overhead. Losing momentum with every tree it sent toppling, the battered vessel finally came to rest in a trail of smoke and new, bright sunlight carved out in its wake.

 

* * *

 

Consciousness returned to Anakin in a distorted stutter of time and sensations.

The pale lavender of a sky painted with either dusk or dawn, the crisp scent of newly cut evergreens almost overwhelming him.

The ground rough and hard beneath him, the soft wisp of a fern dragging across his cheek.

Night, two moons bone-white crescents set in the black of the sky. A distorted shape rising over him, strange and frightening.

Anakin sat up with a cry into the gentle warmth of late morning light, body protesting the sudden movement and sending him back down against the ground with a whimper of pain.

The shape was gone along with the night and the moons, leaving only the waving froth of verdant leaves high overhead around the edges of the makeshift clearing he’d dug out with their ship. _When we crashed._

 _Obi-Wan!_ _  
_

Forcing himself back up, letting out a sharp breath at the throbbing of his head that lanced down and all through his body, Anakin clutched at the dirt to steady himself and looked around, trying to sort through the mad jumble of life cascading from the forest to him through the Force and focus only on his former master.

It only took a second: Obi-Wan lay just out of reach next to Anakin, on his side and facing him, motionless save the steady fall of his rise and chest. A few trickles of dried blood marred his head and hands, more hints of it spread across his robes, but his color was good and he glowed as strongly in the Force as ever.

Anakin felt the worst of his panic subside and gingerly crossed his legs to take the weight off of his arms, new pain shooting along shallow bruises and scratches as he reached to press his comlink and open a channel to any Jedi or Republic forces in the area.

He was used to having no real feeling in his gloved mechanical hand beyond the crude sensations of pressure and heat it relayed back to his nervous system, so it took him two jabs at the top of his wrist to convince himself of what his other hand was telling him: there was no hard weight between finger and arm.

His comm was missing.

A cool breeze rose through the trees, clattering their leaves and heavy with the promise of eventual rain. It blew his hair into his face and he shoved it back out of the way as he stared, confused, at his wrist. Glancing over at Obi-Wan, he frowned and shook his head, trying to clear it and understand what he was seeing.

Obi-Wan’s was gone as well, and a quick scan of the ground around them both showed they hadn’t been knocked loose somehow or were lying broken on the ground.

 _Kark it_ , he thought as a distant peal of thunder sounded, closing his eyes and trying to fight back the searing pain along the top of his skull. _We’ll find them later._

Not trusting himself to move more than he had to, he focused a small tendril of the Force and sent it out to brush against Obi-Wan’s face. _Master. Wake up, Master._

It took a little more effort that that, Anakin finally wrapping the Force into Obi-Wan’s disheveled collars to tug at them, but Obi-Wan’s eyes fluttered open and found him after a few dazed attempts to focus. “Anakin?”

“I’m here. Are you all right, Master?”

“I...” he swallowed, “I don’t think I broke anything,” he murmured, rolling onto his side and pushing himself up with the same careful motions Anakin had. Above them the charcoal ghosts of storm clouds were rolling in, pushing aside the gentle piles of white their ship had shot through on its doomed trajectory downward however many hours or days ago that had been.

“Me neither but I hit my head pretty good. Our comms are gone in the wreck somewhere and we need to find shelter,” Anakin said to the sky before looking back at him, battle habits allowing him to marshal his thoughts about the immediate future faster than most. “Do you think you can move? I don’t think we should try staying under any of the wreckage in the rain in case any of the wiring is still live.”

Obi-Wan darted a glance at his own wrist to confirm what Anakin had said, frowning as Anakin had when he saw his was gone as well. “Agreed. I think, I think I saw some kind of complex or building when we were coming in. A flash in the woods far up ahead as we went under the tree line.”

“We might have landed pretty close to it then,” Anakin said, sighting back along the rough chaos left in the wake of their landing as Obi-Wan stood and made it a few steps to sink down next to him.

“Perhaps. Show me your head.”

Anakin leaned over, Obi-Wan’s hand gentle in his hair and brisk with the Force as he sent it through him, first finding the wound and then spreading slow, careful healing over it like a drifting snowfall. Letting out a gasp of relief as the worst of the pain began to recede, he waited only a few moments before he reached up to pull Obi-Wan’s hand away, sensing the exhaustion in the other man. “Don’t do too much. We don’t know how much of a walk we’ve got.”

“Quiet,” Obi-Wan said, pushing Anakin’s hand back off and sending more of the soothing energy through him. “There. That’s the worst of it for now.”

More thunder crept along through the forest, low and deep.

Obi-Wan helped Anakin up and once they had confirmed they still had their sabers and emergency rations on their belts the two set off in the woods in the direction the Force whispered to Obi-Wan was toward the large building he’d caught a glimpse of rising from the trees.

 

* * *

 

The two of them put one foot in front of the other, thankful for the relatively smooth ground they found themselves on. While ferns and moss crowded the forest floor, occasional outcroppings of rock rising like waves of stone around them, there wasn’t much underbrush to avoid or hack through as little daylight filtered down from high above. The diffused light made everything look like it was underwater, the bottom of some lake long undisturbed.

The air itself was cool and damp, drifting in breezes past old tree trunks that rose high up like columns into arched curves of greenery and the occasional hint of grey sky glimpsed through branches. Anakin took a deep breath of the moist air and folded his arms as they walked, wishing they hadn’t left their cloaks behind on the Separatist base they’d fled what felt like a month ago. “Where do you think we are?” he asked, trying to distract himself from the miserable aches and pains seething through his body and sensing through a ghostly echo of his own discomfort that Obi-Wan wasn’t doing any better. _We’ll be lucky to get to wherever this place is before the rain rolls in._ “I mean, when the hyperdrive blew the force of it could have shot us out in any direction.”

Obi-Wan pondered this for a few moments as they walked, thoughtfully looking at the foliage and listening to the distant cry of birds, glad for something to occupy his thoughts other than his injuries. “Hard to say. My first guess would be Takodana or Telladoria.”

“Or Naboo,” Anakin murmured.

“Or Naboo. But forest-rich planets are fairly common. We’ll have to wait for night time and check the constellations to get a better idea.”

At the mention of night the odd, frightening silhouette flashed through Anakin’s mind and his mouth narrowed into a tight line. “We may not be alone here. I don’t know for sure. It could have been a tree bending in the wind or maybe hitting my head was making me see things, but last night, or one of the nights we were out, I thought I saw something.”

“What did it look like?”

“I can’t describe it. Human? Vaguely? Just, I don’t know. There was something _wrong_ with it.”

Obi-Wan nodded without any doubt: if there was something that could be counted on in times of danger it was Anakin’s instincts. “Could you fight right now if it came down to it?”

“I think so. You?”

“I think so, too. Hopefully we won’t need to.”

Anakin gave a grunt of agreement and they continued sluggishly weaving their way through the trees, the sound of the building wind and rolls of thunder muffled by the canopy and the scent of coming rain growing heavier in the air.

Almost twenty minutes later, Obi-Wan was lost in a shallow meditation, reaching out to pull the Force around him in a comforting layer as best he could, when something caught his eye ahead. Or the lack of something.

A narrow, overgrown path cut through the ferns and plants and rocks, a simple dirt line stretching off into the woods in either direction and one that had clearly fallen into disuse some time ago. He and Anakin came to a stop in front of it, looking one way and then the other. “Which way?” Anakin asked, squinting into the hazy green of the path as it disappeared off into to their left and opening up his senses as best he could even though the effort stung his mind further. “Do you hear that?”

Obi-Wan closed his eyes and tilted his head, borrowing a little power from the edge of Anakin’s aura. “Water down that way. A river?”

“I think so.”

“I believe the building we’re looking for will be the other way,” he said, turning his attention to the other shaded direction the path wandered off in. There was a swell in the Force that way, somehow more powerful than all the life around them in the forest, and he frowned at it, thinking of Anakin’s words about what he thought he had seen. _There was something_ wrong _with it._

This did not exactly feel wrong, but it didn’t feel right either. “Do you sense that?”

“Yeah. It’s weird. It feels like being in the Temple, sort of.”

“Echoes,” Obi-Wan said, thinking of the unique way the Force shimmered in overlapping reflections when a group of Force-users were together, or when he stood in the library of artifacts the Council had assembled.

“Yeah. Should we keep going?”

“I don’t sense any immediate danger. Do you?”

“No.”

A fresh crash of thunder boomed close by and the first fat drops of rain began to drip through the trees around them, settling the issue. “We need to get out of the elements for now,” Obi-Wan said, stepping onto the path and using his boot to nudge a few small stones together into a pile by the side of it to mark where they had come from. “Keep an eye out and don’t draw your saber unless necessary. We don’t want to frighten the locals when we get there.”

 

* * *

 

They had only been on the path for a handful of minutes when, upon rounding a lazy curve in the dirt track, the trees suddenly dropped away to reveal the sprawling, tangled remains of formal gardens as weed-filled and overgrown as the path.

Beyond it lay an intimidating sweep of stone walls and black, yawning windows set between weathered columns almost lost in hungry vines that had crawled inside some of the broken frames. From the vast gardens that surrounded it and the arched doorways that ran all along the first floor it seemed to have once been a pleasure estate of sorts, its inherent grace long overtaken by decay and the elements. It stood stark and angular against the black storm clouds roiling behind it, still radiating strange, intense echoes of Force energy too strong for either of them to parse out any details.

“I don’t think anyone’s been here in a long time, Master,” Anakin said, pointing out the old-fashioned bulk of a primitive comm dish rising up behind the left side of the mansion and his sleeve waving in the cool breeze gusting past them. “No one’s used 802s for decades. Maybe even a hundred years. So much for frightening the locals.”

“True. Perhaps what we’re feeling is something left over. An old training ground for local Force-sensitives, possibly?” Obi-Wan added as they swallowed their pain and hurried down the wide main path of the garden they’d found themselves in, picking their way past spirals of thorny vines as the dark red blooms atop them shivered in the growing wind.

The entrance to the mansion itself yawned open, the doors meant to hang in the arch fallen and rusting at the bottom of the stone steps that led up to it. Anakin gave an arch of his eyebrow to Obi-Wan and smacked the large, crude button by the door as they walked in, flakes of rust scattering away in a gust of cold air. “I guess this door only has an open button now, huh?”

“Do try not to break anything, Anakin,” Obi-Wan said in a crisp deadpan as he took in the dilapidated stretch of hallway they had entered, wide and draped in debris and cobwebs, the only light weak as it filtered in through tall, narrow windows long missing their glass. “Stars, my arm hurts.”

Anakin frowned, almost forgetting his own injuries in a sudden and fearful wave of concern: Obi-Wan almost never admitted to pain out loud. “Come on, let’s go further inside away from the wind and then we can rest.” He grit his teeth, trying to focus only on the problem at hand and not the hundred sensations the heightened Force here was shoving at him: the sudden and violent hiss of rain cascading down to drum along the flagstones outside, the scent of sweat and blood fresh on Obi-Wan and himself, the bone-deep weariness that invited him to curl up right there in the glittering swathes of broken glass lining the hall.

Obi-Wan didn’t argue, taking the lead and stepping through the half-open door closest to them.

It was a gloomy, unlit little room of some sort, silhouettes piled all around and Obi-Wan drew his saber left-handed to let his bruised arm rest, lighting it to guide their way. Piles of long-obsolete datapads glimmered blue beneath the thick coating of dust over them, stacked haphazardly on what seemed to be a writing desk and the floor all around it. He swept the blade back and forth until it revealed another door that opened on a stuffy hallway just as dark as the room.

Anakin followed behind him, his own saber lit and face blue as a ghost’s in the icy halo of his weapon, the only noise their own footsteps and the distant roar of rain as they moved deeper into the mansion one room at a time, passing the misshapen shadows of rotting furniture, deactivated droids, and piles of debris from where the ceiling had caved in.

The Force had coalesced into something almost palpable here deeper inside the mansion. It reminded Anakin of the heavy clouds of incense at the old temples dedicated to the god of the desert back on Tatooine: rich and sickly-sweet, permeating everything, so intoxicating one could almost forget one’s troubles. Or one’s bruised and battered body aching for rest.

“So what kind of architecture is this?” he asked, fighting back impatience, voice echoing as they found themselves in another dim hall lined with tall, narrow columns but the glow of colorless light spilling down toward them from some much larger room ahead.

“I couldn’t say,” Obi-Wan replied wearily, pointing with his saber toward the end of the hall before extinguishing it and hooking it back on his belt, Anakin doing the same. “It seems to be laid out in a vague Early Classical style or a copy of one, and if that is the case that should be a large formal room down that way. It might have windows we can open up if we need to start a fire for warmth tonight.”

Their energy almost gone, only the thought of lying down somewhere dry keeping them moving, they walked down to the bright, open arch and through it into a lofty chamber resplendent with the strangely unbalanced, heady tides of the Force they’d felt all the way out in the forest.

Obi-Wan immediately understood the space to be a library. Datapads in leather holders were mixed with printed volumes in faded rows all along the walls, shelves stretching high toward the light that poured in grey and soft from pairs of windows that climbed the rest of the way to the domed ceiling far above. He would have smiled if something else hadn’t immediately drawn his attention.

Scattered all around the room were cushions and seats next to small statues and boxes on graceful display stands, but the center of the room was given over to a large, worn block of stone taller than they were and set on a stand so that it towered over the entire room. Carved in bas-relief technique, delicate shapes emerging from it only halfway, it showed a lush tangle of blossoms and vines suggesting a garden. In the middle the artisan had masterfully rendered the hooded form of what seemed to be a woman with her head turned into the stone and her features hidden, as if she were looking off into the receding waves of the eternally flowering garden carved in gentle waves around her.

Standing beneath this relief, the tilt of their heads suggesting they were looking up at it, were two black-robed figures, their own hoods thrown back and men from the broad line of their shoulders. There was something horribly familiar about the light color of the one man’s hair and the curls of the taller one, and as they turned at the sound of Obi-Wan and Anakin’s footsteps into the room Obi-Wan stopped, taking a step back in disbelief as Anakin let out a curse next to him.

“Well,” the stranger with Obi-Wan’s voice and Obi-Wan’s face murmured as he fixed them both with eyes a harsh gold where they should have been blue, “now isn’t this interesting?”

The man next to him, Anakin’s twin save those same feral, frightening eyes, tilted his head with a crooked grin and drew a lightsaber.

Anakin’s heart stopped at the garish red line that leapt from the hilt.


	2. The Third Belief

Neither Jedi spoke as they took in the bizarre sight of their nightmarish opposites, all four of them dwarfed by the high ceilings of the grand room awash in unnatural tides of the Force.

Rain battered against the windows to the tang of ozone as the man that looked like Anakin grinned at him, twirling the red glare of his lightsaber thoughtlessly beside him in the exact way Anakin did when he was considering which attack to open with in a duel.

The flourish sent shifting highlights along the gilded spines of the walls of books, bright sparks creeping in cold crimson fire past the dull light of the thunderstorm outside as they stared at each other.

Rattled, Anakin drew his own saber with an angry snap of hissing light, and Obi-Wan fought for words at the sight of himself and Anakin all in black with gold where their eyes should be blue.

“Who are you?” Anakin growled, bewildered and furious. “Is this some kind of Separatist trick? Are you Changelings?”

“We could ask the same of you,” Obi-Wan’s twin said carefully, tilting his head as he studied them. His icy gaze flicked from Anakin and Obi-Wan’s armor and sabers to their ripped clothes and tense shoulders, and Obi-Wan wished he didn’t recognize the calculating lift of the other man’s eyebrow or the slow way he raised his chin at the end of it.

He had weighed them, and found them lacking.

Obi-Wan wished he could say the same, but these two stood tall and proud and without a scratch or scrape on them. However they had come here, it had been far more pleasant, and dread twisted his stomach at the thought of having to duel them.

“What are you?” Anakin repeated, sliding his feet into a strong, anchored stance across from his prowling twin.

“Oh, you know the answer to that. We are Sith,” the man that looked exactly like Obi-Wan answered calmly, not even reaching for his saber as he admitted it.

“Then surrender or I’ll kill you,” Anakin spat, refusing to consider what it meant to meet a Sith with his own face, gripping his lightsaber tighter as Obi-Wan stepped away from him to give himself room to draw if it came to that.

Adrenaline flooding hard and cold through them both, the two Jedi fell away from their own pains and aches into the safety of their bond, aware of where the other stood and what step he would take next as surely as both knew their own.

_Master, they look just like us! How is that possible? How?_

_No, Anakin. That is not us. That will never be us!_

_But, Master--_

_Keep your mind in the present! They are enemies. They are armed. That is all. This is some kind of trick--_

“I must say, if this is a trick it’s impeccable. He’s just like you,” the Sith said to his younger companion with a dry, amused smile, echoing Obi-Wan’s exact thoughts as he made a vague gesture at Anakin’s Jedi robes and blue lightsaber. “Minus a few, oh, minor details.”

 _Do not let him goad you!_ Obi-Wan warned, and Anakin wondered in the back of his mind if Obi-Wan meant that thought for Anakin or himself.

“Let me fight him, Master,” the other Sith answered, never taking his predator’s golden eyes off of Anakin as lightning crashed somewhere far out in the forest. “I’ll bet I could win.”

_He will, Anakin. Do not attack them. Only as a last resort._

Anakin darted a furious look over at Obi-Wan and refused to lower his saber, speechless at the idea of standing down before the two monsters, even if the monsters bore their faces. _I will not die like some spineless haa’li, Master!_

Ignoring the rough clone slang, Obi-Wan sent back a cold, wordless demand through their bond that Anakin shut up and let him handle the situation before Anakin got them both killed.

“Gentlemen, there is no need for violence just yet,” he managed, unholstering his own saber but not lighting it yet, trying to buy them time to figure a way out or at least marshal what little strength they had left as thunder grumbled outside. “I must say, using our faces is a new trick. I really should start wearing my beard shorter.” _The only way back out would be through the hall. They’d chase us down easily if we turned to run, and wear us down in a fight just as easily if we tried to back our way out._

“Why would we not have your faces? We’re you,” the other Anakin said from behind the hissing, garish line of his saber.

The desperate half-plans that were flying back and forth between Anakin and Obi-Wan spiraled into nothing at the Sith saying out loud what they were already uneasily thinking.

“We are us. You can’t be us,” Anakin spat, hating how childish he sounded but his entire soul rebelling at the thought of the feral creature across from him being connected to him in any way.

“We are not of this world,” Obi-Wan’s twin said with the same nonchalance one would point out the current weather.

“What do you mean?” Obi-Wan asked slowly, not sure he wanted to know the answer.

“There was blackness, and then we were here. But, if you listen through the Force, there is so much darkness here in this place.” The older Sith stroked his beard thoughtfully, considering them both with what might have been the hint of a smirk under his pale hand. “Can’t you feel it? I believe it drew us here, just as it drew you, it would seem.”

Anakin lifted his saber to slant across his chest and narrowed his eyes, their blue drained by the glow of his blade to a dull silver, unwilling to acknowledge the uncomfortable weight of the Force hanging heavy in the room around them and the way it pressed against his skull and made it almost impossible to concentrate on anything other than his fear and anger. “That wouldn’t draw us. We’re Jedi.”

“So far,” the younger Sith taunted from behind his blade, unnervingly familiar face bathed in his own crimson light.

“Shut up,” Anakin spat. He didn’t want to hear any more out of his bizarre twin or the other man who looked and sounded exactly like his best friend, his patience frayed by pain and confusion. The Force surged up around him, so bright and glittering it was almost painful, the other three in the room immediately sensing it.

A gust of wind howled past and through the mansion, rattling the roof and panes like bones.

“Shut up?” Anakin’s twin grinned wider, clearly welcoming his anger and fear as he dropped into a defensive stance. “Why don’t you make me?”

Time slowed as Anakin whirled his saber behind him into the opening stance of an attack, Obi-Wan shouting at him: “Anakin, no!”

He didn’t stop or even hesitate as he swung the blade in an arc of blue above his head, building speed and power.

The Force pounded in his ears, loud and awful with every fine detail of his opponent’s face, of the rain skittering along the old window panes, of the smell of blood on his own robes and the hard tiles under his boots: when his emotions overtook him like this there was only instinct and fire, and here in this strange place it was even worse than usual.

He let the blade fall and swing behind him naturally, drawing back for the opening arc of an attack.

“Anakin. Stop.”

The words pierced him, freezing Anakin in place where he stood as surely as a Force trick would have.

Even though they weren’t directed at him, even though they were not laced with anything more than calm confidence they would be obeyed, he couldn’t help but lower his blade back down to his side.

The voice was Obi-Wan and it wasn’t.

Stunned, Anakin realized it was the other man-- _the Sith--_ speaking in that same crisp accent but with a dominant, sure tone he had never heard from his own Obi-Wan. It frightened and intrigued Anakin on a deep, instinctive level, and he watched in bewildered fascination as his other self immediately powered his red saber down and stepped back.

“Good boy,” the older Sith murmured, and ran his hand up his companion’s neck to grab at his dark curls, tangling his fingers in them and tugging his head back a little. The younger man’s golden eyes fluttered shut and his mouth parted in a soft, happy sigh.

The fight forgotten, everything forgotten, Anakin wasn’t sure if his embarrassment or Obi-Wan’s crashed through the bond first, but the swell of it was so instantaneous they mutually slammed their link shut as best they could before any coherent thoughts could make it through to the other.

The Sith version of Obi-Wan slid his gaze over to Anakin, the corner of his mouth lifting in a knowing smile that only made things worse as he let his hand slide back down his Anakin’s neck and folded his arms, raising an eyebrow as he waited for Anakin to turn off his weapon as well.

“Anakin, please,” Obi-Wan repeated in a stiff, awkward request as he holstered his own, clearly as thrown as Anakin was.

Anakin powered his saber off, hooking it on his belt and struggling for words as he tried to block out of his mind the unfathomable sight of pale fingers making a fist in hair just like his own. “Who, who are you two? Really?”

“Obi-Wan Kenobi and Anakin Skywalker,” the older Sith said with a bow and elegant sweep of his black robe as the younger sneered at both of them.

“No. That’s not possible,” Obi-Wan replied, his voice the snap of ice in winter. Anakin could tell he was upset at their names being said aloud by the Sith, even through their temporarily dampened bond. The straightness of Obi-Wan’s back, the thin line of his mouth, the tight crossing of his arms: that strange, intimate touch between the pair had stunned him too. “You are not us. You can’t be us.”

“May I?” Obi-Wan’s twin held his hands up to show he would not go for his own holstered saber and walked over toward him.

Obi-Wan bristled in the Force so sharply Anakin almost cringed away from it, but he didn’t move, allowing the man to come closer.

 _He has my face and my voice and my mannerisms but that is not me. That will never be me. I would never Fall_ , Obi-Wan told himself with a hard, fervent determination as the man leaned in close enough to whisper into his ear, the blond line of his eyelashes hauntingly familiar as he did.

“Your first kiss wasn’t Satine. It was another Padawan, done on a dare to see what it was like,” he murmured, voice cool and bloodless. “But when you kissed Satine, late one night on the rusted balcony of a tiny safehouse, with heat lightning in the sky and Qui-Gon snoring in the room behind you, you wished she had been your first.”

Obi-Wan took a step back as if the man had bit him, flushing red and anger so bright and sudden at the unexpected and callous unearthing of such a sacred memory that it took his breath away. The musty scent of decay filled his lungs and almost choked him.

“Don’t you _ever_ talk about her again, Sith,” he hissed, heart pounding in his chest. “Ever.”

“Fine.” The other shrugged, seemingly unaffected by either the memory or Obi-Wan’s threat. “Good enough?” he asked quietly, unreadable golden eyes locked on Obi-Wan’s. “Have I made my point?”

Obi-Wan could only nod, not trusting himself to speak as he furiously tried to release the worst of his emotions into the Force, a new and horrible understanding dawning on him. _This man is me. This man is me and yet he took one of my-- our-- most precious memories and used it like another man would use a game piece. Just to rattle me. Just to upset me._

_Because he could._

He glanced over at Anakin, a new fear taking hold for his brother-in-arms and best friend. _Whatever happens, I have to keep Anakin safe from him._

“Master?” Anakin looked back and forth between them in alarm, not knowing what had passed between them, but before he could say anything his twin stretched, lazy and satisfied with himself, and switched over to a slave creole only Anakin could understand.

“<I think we’re proving we are who we say we are. So it’s my turn, huh?>” He sat down on the edge of one of the stuffed chairs behind him like a raven settling onto a perch, biting his lip as he thought about it. “<How about this? You slaughtered an entire village of the dune-snakes after they murdered your mother.>”

Ice crashed down Anakin’s spine and into his gut, and he darted a panicked look at Obi-Wan only to find him looking back with the same puzzled, angry concern he himself had shown a moment ago. “<Shut up>,” he hissed back in the same language, fists tightening at his sides. “<Shut up or I will make you>.”

The other Anakin gave another smirk but said nothing at a warning look from his own master and raised his hands in an exaggerated sign of surrender.

“Anakin?” Obi-Wan asked, the question hanging in the grey gloom between them as he moved closer to him.

“He,” Anakin paused as his mind raced alongside his thudding heart, “he knows things only I know.”

Obi-Wan started to reach out and put his hand on his back to comfort him, but the image of the Sith grabbing the other by the hair flashed through his mind, frightening him. He stayed where he was, curling his fist back against his own hip without Anakin noticing. “So does mine.”

Clearing his throat and stepping forward, the older Sith addressed them both with a wide, conciliatory sweep of his hands. “Whatever strange forces are at work here, it would seem we have established that we are indeed here now with you, hmm? And given the weather and likely lack of transportation on both our parts, it would seem we are together in this place for at least a little while. I therefore suggest a truce for now,” he said, stepping back to stand next to his Anakin and resting a hand atop his shoulder in a silent command to stay where he was.

“After all, I personally have no desire to murder myself, especially when I’m wounded and wouldn’t be able to put up much of a fight.”

The unspoken threat was clear despite his casual tone: if Anakin and Obi-Wan foolishly insisted on attacking these two would not hesitate to kill them, quick and coldly and utterly without mercy. There was ice in the velvet of his voice, the kind of ice that would never thaw no matter how much sun shone on it.

Obi-Wan clenched his jaw and instinctively moved closer to Anakin, whispering across their bond with a new uncertainty that the link between them would actually mean their conversation remained private. _Truce?_

Anakin’s answer was a mulish, reluctant assent tangled in a dozen darker urges and emotions Obi-Wan usually only saw after days of relentless battle and lack of sleep.

 _I can’t get him away from the strangeness of this place but I have to get him away from them._ “We agree to your truce,” Obi-Wan said carefully, fighting a strange, nightmarish sense of unreality at addressing a Sith version of himself. “But I believe you would agree it would be, ah, best if we put some space between us here.”

“True.”

“What... what do we call you?” Obi-Wan hated asking. He didn’t want to know what name he would take if he Fell, what name would appeal to that side of him most.

“I suppose it would be confusing to call us both Obi-Wan and the two of them Anakin, hmm?”

“You both gave up any right to those names when you chose the Dark wherever it is you come from,” Obi-Wan answered politely, ice threaded cold and bitter through his tone.

Anakin glanced over at him, concerned from within the depths of his own unease: Obi-Wan always saved a smirk for their enemies, no matter how grim the situation looked. _What did the Sith say to him?_

He thought of his own twin’s gleeful recollection of that dark, horrid night on Tatooine the two of them apparently shared and closed his eyes, trying in vain to will away the memory of the stench and feel of blue ozone endlessly slashing through the soft, sucking weight of live bodies rather than battle droids.

The two Sith didn’t seem to notice Anakin’s distress, apparently at ease in the odd swells of the Force around them as the older man considered his reply. “Fair enough. I am Darth Veris and this is my apprentice, Darth Isten,” he bowed.

For his part, Isten gave the absolute barest of nods, unfolding his long legs to stand up from the chair he had been sitting on. “Come on, Master. I want to go look around.”

The two walked off through the same open arch Obi-Wan and Anakin had come through to enter the library, disappearing off into the long, deep shadows of the hallway without a backward glance.

Only when the sound of their footsteps had receded into silence did Obi-Wan allow himself to slump to the dusty floor, back against the nearest chair, mind and body too beleaguered by the events of the day to take any more.

Anakin knelt next to him, not feeling much better himself, and put his hand on Obi-Wan’s shoulder. “Hey. You rest. I’ll keep watch.” There was too much to think about, too many emotions ricocheting through him to allow a straight shot at any particular one, but he would try to hold himself together. For his master’s sake if not his own.

“Did that just happen? Were they really there?” Obi-Wan murmured through his fingers as he ran his hand down his face to rest atop his beard, the synthetic scent of his glove harsh in his nose as he stared off into the distance.

“Well, I have a head injury but… but we both saw them, Master,” Anakin said reluctantly, gaze hard on the doorway as if the two would jump back through it at any second. An unspoken conversation flowed between them in half-conscious images and feelings: Obi-Wan’s memory of a clone trooper inexplicably walking away unscratched from an airstrike that had killed his entire squad, answered by Anakin’s recollection of the unearthly auroras that hung in low orbit like ghosts over one of the first planets they had led a campaign together on. More followed, traded back and forth between them in hazy impressions, the act helping them find the first bit of desperately needed balance after all that had happened.

Strange things happened in war and in the universe, their souls finally agreed without needing words, especially when the Force was involved.

Strange things. And sometimes terrible things.

“They’re us,” Obi-Wan said, dread evident in his voice and the two of them retreating behind their shields instinctively as their thoughts drifted back to the present and the disturbing affection the pair of Sith had shown each other. “I don’t understand how, but they’re us.”

“The Five Heretical Beliefs,” Anakin murmured as he shifted to sit cross-legged next to Obi-Wan on the floor, brushing a spot clean first as best he could. “From the last Jedi history class I took as a Padawan.”

Obi-Wan leaned back against the overstuffed chair, stretching his legs out straight and letting his injured arm slide down into his lap. He let out a relieved sigh at no longer having to pretend he could use it, and gave Anakin a surprised look as he realized what he was talking about. “You remember those?”

“Forbidden ideas no good Jedi would be interested in? Come on, Master,” Anakin said, finding a small smile in the middle of the bizarre, frightening situation they found themselves in.

Shaking his head more out of habit than any real disapproval, Obi-Wan watched the door along with Anakin. “The Third Belief is what you mean, right?” he mused, unholstering his saber and leaving the heavy, reassuring weight across his lap as Anakin did the same with his.

“Yeah. The one that says the Force binds our world to others, right? Worlds like ours but not ours.”

Obi-Wan canted his head, attempting to still his mind long enough to brush against the power latent and electric around them. “Heretical though it may be, this whole area does feel strange in the Force. It's unlike anywhere I’ve ever been. Like we’re sitting on top of a magnet.”

Anakin found that to be a gross understatement but he had learned a long time ago no one else seemed to experience the Force as viscerally and sometimes painfully as he did. “Yeah.”

Silence fell between them as they both attempted to imagine a world where they had both Fallen, where they proudly bore those awful yellow eyes and red sabers.

 _I’ll bet it was me_ , Anakin found himself thinking out of nowhere. _Isten, he called himself? I’ll bet Isten pulled Obi-Wan into the dark._

_It would be me._

_I’ve never been what I’m supposed to be._

_I pulled him into the dark in their world. I did that._

Horrified at how easy, how effortlessly plausible it seemed, Anakin shoved the idea aside so violently it rattled his shields and startled Obi-Wan from whatever thoughts he had been lost in.

_No._

_I would never hurt him. And he would never hurt me._

_No._

“We have to get out of here,” Obi-Wan said, grim and pale as he watched Anakin with fresh concern. “We have to get away from them.”

“We will,” Anakin promised, forcing down his own worries and fears as best he could, wishing he could be as still and tranquil as the woman carved in the block of stone that sprawled across the room behind them. “Just get some rest. I’ll keep watch first.”

 

* * *

 

Obi-Wan fell asleep faster than he had thought possible, exhaustion overcoming the dull seething pain drifting through his body, a wave swamping him in sudden, blissful dark.

A dream followed soon after, disjointed images and sensations tumbling through his mind until they took shape into an avalanche cresting through the dark down toward him as he stood alone and helpless in its path.

The searing flicker of blaster fire and explosions. Fear, cold and sharp, some his own and some that of his clones. A battle. His saber blue lightning dancing through smoke.

Anakin crying out for him in agony, his voice echoing and distorted. From the sound of it he was trapped inside the twisted metal of one of their tanks and Obi-Wan ran to it, fighting to tear open the door with the Force as he deflected blaster bolts in desperate swings of his saber.

The ruined, dented sheet of metal gave without sound, revealing a black, misshapen shadow inside that stared at Obi-Wan with hollow, sightless eyes that saw him nonetheless.

It watched him. And somewhere Anakin was still screaming.

 _Anakin_.

“Anakin!” Obi-Wan jerked awake, stumbling to his feet and almost falling over the chair he had been leaning against. His saber hilt fell and bounced across the floor in a rough clatter of metal on stone.

He called it back to his hand with a panicked jerk of the Force as he spun around in the now-dark room in a whirl of dazzling blue that cast long shadows over the delicate furniture and books lining the walls.

He was alone.

 _Anakin!_ he sent through their bond, gripping his saber so hard fresh pain shot up his arm. _Anakin! Where are you?_

The answer came, quick and guilty, from somewhere very close by as footsteps approached from down the hall. _Master, I’m here! I’m sorry!_

Anakin rounded the corner, the glow of Obi-Wan’s blade spilling out into the hall enough warning he knew to enter slowly and not startle him further. “I was checking the other doors out in the hall. You know, the ones that lead off it? All six of them are locked, I think. I just wanted to make sure that the main way we came in is the only way into that hallway and this room.”

Fighting to control his breathing, Obi-Wan powered his saber down, leaving the two alone in darkness as their eyes adjusted to the weak flickers of lightning still flaring far off along the black horizon outside. “Dammit, Anakin,” he muttered, sinking back down into the chair this time and ignoring the faint, dry puff of dust that rose as he did. _I was sure you’d been hurt!_ he thought silently, unwilling to lower his shields and let that creep through for fear his anxiety and terror from the nightmare would escape as well.

Anakin frowned and sighed, clearly expecting a lecture. “Look, I was just trying to make sure we were safe in here, alright?”

The urge to argue with Anakin rose, as it often had in recent months, something in Anakin’s tone riling him as it almost always did nowadays, but Obi-Wan channeled his frustration into a long, tired sigh of his own.

It was a valiant attempt to rid himself of the nightmare that had shocked him awake, and only partially successful. “I know. Look, it’s your turn to rest, isn’t it? I’ll take watch until dawn.”

Thinking of how graceful his twin was, calm and poised and without his own injuries currently weighing him down, Obi-Wan reluctantly added, “I would say if we’re both not dead by that point those two don’t mean us any immediate harm.”

Anakin thought of the intent way Obi-Wan-- _no, Veris--_ had regarded him, of the way his mouth had curved in the hint of a smile as he studied him, and glared at the empty archway as if he were standing there. “No, I don’t think they do.”  

Looking back at a crisp snap of clasps and a grunt from Obi-Wan, Anakin saw him clumsily trying to pull his injured arm free of his bracer.

Leaning over him without speaking, he gently moved Obi-Wan’s hand aside and opened it the rest of the way, carefully lifting Obi-Wan’s arm out of the cool white plating and setting the piece aside on the carved wooden table next to the chair he sat in.

They had tended to each other after battles for what felt like forever, and there was something soothing in the familiar, wordless rhythm of careful touches and closeness as he stripped him out of his armor. Only when Obi-Wan’s arm guards and chest plate sat on the table and floor did he speak again, his voice tired and worn. “Anakin?”

“Yeah?”

“I want you to be careful around them. I don’t know exactly how long we will be here with them, Force willing not very, but please promise me you will be on your guard around them. I don’t mean only physically.”

“I know,” Anakin answered in the same quiet tone, earlier annoyance gone. “You too, ok?”

“I will. Get some sleep, Anakin.”

Thunder rumbled outside as he settled into an equally dusty chair next to Obi-Wan’s, stretching his long legs out and finding sleep as quickly as his master had earlier.

Obi-Wan was careful to listen as the storm outside rolled past, finally leaving the mansion and forest in the cool, silent black of the early hours of the morning around them, but the Sith never came back and Anakin never stirred.

 _Get all the rest you can,_ he thought, watching the first gauzy rays of dawn light creep across the floor and into Anakin’s hair as he lay sprawled in the chair next to him. _I have a feeling we will need it here._

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Woo hoo, I'm back from my trip! Thank you all for your comments on the first chapter, and I'll catch up with comments tomorrow-ish.
> 
> The next update will be in two weeks, probably plus a few days. Thank you as always for reading!


	3. The Gardens

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I have to get this out or I'll keep tinkering with it forever. Please note the addition of the NSFW tag, and hope you enjoy!

Anakin awoke slowly to the gentle warmth of the late morning sun on his face and the smell of evergreen crisp in his lungs.

Someone was opening windows wherever he was, the faint creak of low-tech locks snapping open and rusty hinges turning. Another refreshing breeze drifted past, clearing out more of the odd, musty smell all around him.

He blinked and yawned into the seat back he had curled into, looking up in confusion at the stone relief looming over him. _Where..._

_The crash. The house._

_The Sith._

Shifting in his seat, he rubbed at his eyes and found Obi-Wan turned away from him in a far corner of the spacious library, his uninjured arm extended toward a set of the high windows ringing the room and using a tendril of the Force to push them open. “There we are,” Obi-Wan murmured to himself as more fresh air swept in from the gardens and forest outside.

The night before seemed like an awful dream, and Anakin watched him without speaking: Obi-Wan’s robes were as dirty and torn as his were, and he still bore the untreated cuts and scrapes along his face and hands that Anakin still had as well.

But it didn’t matter: Anakin couldn’t really explain it, but Obi-Wan almost always looked dignified to him, confident and assured, no matter how grim their missions became and how disheveled they got. It always gave Anakin hope and something to strive for in his own behavior even if he always seemed to fall far, far short of it.

Last night had been an exception to Obi-Wan’s usual calm, but Anakin could hardly blame him for his reaction to Veris. _I mean, I can’t believe they exist either._

_But they were there._

_And they’re us._

Unwilling to consider the unnerving pair of Sith any further for now, thoughts of them dark stains across the hopeful light of the morning, he focused again on the quiet, gentle turn of his master’s uplifted hand as Obi-Wan moved along to the next set of windows on the far wall, the last pair still closed.

When Anakin had first come to the Temple Obi-Wan had been a stranger to distrust, and then a master to respect, and perhaps their relationship would have remained at that distant, strained level for their rest of their lives if not for the sudden onset of war.

Both fought and fell in a horrible battle early on, one that sent Obi-Wan into bacta for almost two months and Anakin back out into the field after over a month of his own painful, slow recovery.

They had saved each other’s lives that day, and by the time they saw each other again it was like meeting for the first time all over again as a newly raised young knight and an older one, two bound by war and blood and the realization of just how fond they were of each other. That initial epiphany had smoothed the way over the past year for a close friendship to bloom between them, Anakin’s hope and energy balanced perfectly by Obi-Wan’s wisdom and caution.

Like all good friends, they sometimes bickered and fought, more lately than they used to if Anakin were being honest, but in quiet moments like this Anakin could only feel a deep affection for this man who, when faced with a near-fatal crash and mysterious Sith twin, first thought of airing out the room they were staying in.

“Morning, Master,” he said, sending out a wisp of the Force to brush against Obi-Wan’s aura at the same time so as not to startle him.

Obi-Wan looked over his shoulder with a nod. “Good morning, Anakin.” The windows up above him creaked open and he came back across the tiled floor to stand next to him and laid a gentle hand on his head. “How do you feel?”

“A lot better.” That was true. His injury was almost completely gone, only the faintest tenderness left behind, and Obi-Wan’s curious brush of the Force against him felt like pleasantly cool water dripping down his spine rather than the sting of needed healing. “Did you heal me in my sleep?”

“No, but this place might have something to do with it. The Force feels… I don’t know… more accessible here, and likely more so for someone as gifted as you.” Obi-Wan let his hand fall away and lifted his other one, the injured arm, to show Anakin. “For me, unfortunately, I’m still not fully healed and I’m still more tired than I would like to be, but given what our bodies have been through it isn’t surprising.”

Anakin considered this: the house still felt almost uncomfortably awash in the Force to him but it seemed like he had adjusted to it somewhat. A creeping tension ran through him, now that he thought about it, but that was nothing new.

There were days like that for him that came out of nowhere, long stretches of hours when he couldn’t sit still or couldn’t focus on anything but the simplest and most repetitive tasks, and he had learned through experience to ignore the sensation as best he could. “Yeah, true. How’s your arm?”

“Better but I’ll still need your help to heal it the rest of the way. I can’t focus on the flows and myself at the same time.”

“Sure.” Anakin stood, stretching and yawning, and pointed to one of the longer sofas off to the side. When they were settled, brushing aside as much of the dust as they could from the rich, blue fabric, Anakin held his hands out and Obi-Wan shifted to gingerly pull both layers of his sleeve up and let his arm come to rest against Anakin’s palms.

“We should do a light trance only. It’ll take longer, but I don’t want to be completely distracted if they come back.”

“Have you seen them today?” Anakin asked reluctantly, closing his fingers over Obi-Wan’s forearm, his metal thumb crossing a long scar from an old injury his master had received before they had met. Anakin focused on the scar, on the firm weight of Obi-Wan’s arm in his hands, and it helped ground him as he reached out with as steady of a mind as he could into the Force around them.

“No, nor heard them. And,” Obi-Wan paused, sighing in frustration as he laid his free hand over the back of Anakin’s, “I hate to say it, but at least if we heard or saw them we would know where they were.”

Anakin nodded, and to the high, sharp cry of a bird somewhere outside in the trees, they gradually fell into a shallow, peaceful rhythm of shared energy slowly moving back and forth between them. A few shared emotions and thoughts tagged along with each shift of the tide, there and gone so quickly it was difficult for either one to make out anything beyond vague feelings.

_Warm. Together. Hungry. Determined._

They would find their way out of this, both of them knew, just as they had out of a dozen hopeless situations before. In the warm daylight and cool air drifting in it was hard for Anakin to appreciate their fear of the night before despite the undeniable strangeness of it all. Even with the bizarre appearance of the two Sith, it didn’t matter. They would be all right.

_Because we are together._

Strength and quiet perseverance shone brightly from Obi-Wan’s end, the unwavering light that defined him for Anakin, and Anakin wondered, not for the first time, what Obi-Wan saw on his end, what he felt like to Obi-Wan.

Anakin’s shields crept up instinctively but Obi-Wan didn’t seem to notice, lost in the pleasant warmth of his arm no longer hurting. _I’ll never be as balanced as he is_ , Anakin thought with a sigh, glancing out of recent habit across the grand room toward the arch that led into the rest of the house.

Isten was leaning against the carved doorway with arms folded and a lazy smile on his tanned face, his robe gone and the clothing he wore beneath a near-twin of Anakin’s save the fact it was entirely black.

“Hungry?” Isten asked as Anakin jumped to his feet and out of the healing trance abruptly enough Obi-Wan blinked and took a moment to come back to full consciousness.

“What do you want?” Anakin said with as much ice as he could manage, lifting his chin in a dare for Isten to try anything as Obi-Wan rose to his feet as well, flexing his newly healed arm to test it. Seeing the Sith in the daylight didn’t take away in the slightest from his power to unsettle Anakin: it showed even better how perfectly Isten mirrored him, down to the scar arcing down the right side of his face.

Isten rolled his eyes at Anakin’s baleful glare and held up his hands from across the library, pushing himself off the arch to stand up straight. “Come on. Food’s this way.” Without waiting to see if they would follow he turned and walked back into the hallway, as silent as the shadows that hung deep in the windowless passage.

Anakin and Obi-Wan exchanged looks and silently checked their belts for reassurance that their sabers were still there before following the Sith out into the house.

“Why do you care if we’re hungry?” Anakin said, every muscle tense for an attack as they passed the locked doors on either side and emerged out into the other large corridor that ran off left and right through most of the length of the house. Their boots were loud on the tiles, and Anakin went cold at the realization Isten had moved quietly enough to make it to the library without them hearing.

“Can’t have my favorite master starving,” Isten said with a meaningful grin over his shoulder at Obi-Wan, and despite Obi-Wan’s immediate frown Anakin felt an odd jealousy snap to life inside him anyway.

_Stay away from him, Isten._

“Right through here, the way you came in,” Isten said, pointing down into the gloom of a narrow side passageway they had taken yesterday. “You walked right past it. That open door on the left with all the shelves and tins and boxes inside. Looks like a pantry to me. Might be some sealed stuff. Spaceship rations.”

“How do you know what way we came in?” Obi-Wan asked, raising an eyebrow.

Isten only grinned and licked his lips. “Why don’t you try to get it out of me, _Master_?”

Anakin resisted the urge to go for his saber and instead tried to be like Obi-Wan, allowing as best he could a cool, impassive facade to drop down over the needling anger he felt at the hungry way Isten looked at Obi-Wan.

“In the spirit of our truce, we won’t take any more than half of what we find,” Obi-Wan said politely as if he hadn’t heard Isten’s question, but his gaze was harder than it had been a moment ago.

“Fair enough,” Isten agreed as Obi-Wan walked into the little room and lit his saber to begin looking over the items neatly stacked inside, slowly waving the line of blue back and forth.

“What else do you know about this house?” Anakin asked, trying to redirect his ire into something more productive before the unseen tides of the estate magnified it into something more difficult to control.

“Not any more than you do.”

“I somehow doubt that,” Anakin grumbled. “Does the 802 work? That big comm tower out back?”

“Doubt it. You saw how old it is. Want to go check it out?” Isten said. “We could go together.”

Anakin opened his mouth to say no but glanced over at Obi-Wan, who was shifting boxes back and forth and already lost in reading the various languages written on the labels.

While Anakin had no desire for Isten to accompany him anywhere, he had even less to leave him alone with Obi-Wan. _The way he’s acting I don’t even want to know what he’d try with him_ , Anakin thought with disgust and a faint flush he hoped didn’t show in the dim hall they stood in. “Fine. Come on.”

 _Thank you, Anakin_ , Obi-Wan sent after him as they walked back to the main hallway and turned in the direction Anakin remembered seeing the dish when they had first come upon the estate. _They clearly need us for something, most likely a working ship if they really were pulled here from another… well, another place. I would say chances are they are counting on hijacking anyone sent to rescue us. Stay alert, but I think we’re safe for now._

 _Yes, Master,_ Anakin replied silently, walking off alongside Isten and trying not to stare at the dreamlike sight of his own profile marred by the glint of gold beneath his lashes. _Is that what I really look like?_ he wondered with the faintest awe beneath his disgust, unable to match this confident, elegant creature with his own understanding of himself.

_He’s so sure. No hesitation at all._

As they moved off the central corridor through smaller rooms left in darkness, there was only one pool of light they came across: a large bay window in what had once been a bedroom. The sun streaming through it caught Isten’s hair as they passed, a crown of gold briefly firing around him, and Anakin was disturbed by how innocent he looked, how pure he seemed in that moment.

Isten said nothing as they walked together, only stepping aside to allow Anakin to pass first through the various arches and doors they came upon as they made their way to the far back of the mansion. Anakin didn’t mind, knowing there would be no attack: apparently Isten needed him. Or Veris. And it felt good to lead, to take charge in a small way.

 _You will not scare me, Sith_. And for the most part, he believed what he said as they came to one final set of doors, large and hinged ones rusted shut before them.

Large estates like this one always had a comm center, not only for messages and delivery requests but air traffic guidance for visiting ships, and despite the house’s age Anakin was sure he could get the communications back up and running since the ceiling seemed intact in this part of the house.

_A place this isolated, they must have added extra solar power cells to make sure it could reach at the least the rest of the planet or maybe even neighboring planets. Once I get those on, this’ll be perfect for a distress signal._

Isten watched in silence as Anakin tested one of the doors, pushing on its handle. It shook and drifted open with a loud squeal of rusted metal, and he pushed it inward against the wall to lock it in place with a dry click.

 _Not even locked_. Anakin smiled in satisfaction, and then froze at the sight that greeted him.

This roomy space was indeed a comm center, the stations and buttons on the control boards cruder and bulkier than the ones he was familiar with, even older models he had worked on as a slave. But he could figure out any kind of tech: Anakin had been handling circuits and wiring as long as he could remember.  

The outdated equipment was not the problem.

Every single station, every control board in the room, had been destroyed.

Gaping holes, ringed in black soot and covered with dust, marred all of them, and as Anakin stared in disbelief around the room he noticed the blaster shots began very precisely on the left and grew more wild and scattered as they moved to the right, some of the final shots scoring the wall high above the stations as well as the comm panels.

_What? How? Why?!_

He whirled, jabbing a finger at Isten. “You,” he hissed.

The house seemed to reflect his stunned rage, amplifying it, and a dangerous pulse began to throb in the Force around the two. “You two did this!”

Isten didn’t move or flinch from the finger pointed at his chest, golden eyes cold and unreadable. “Look at the dust, idiot.”

Anakin snarled a Huttese curse and spun back around, knowing what Isten said was true but the anger there all the same and needing an outlet. Striding over to one of the panels, rattling it with a frustrated kick, he banged his gloved metal fist along the top, the sound echoing loud and stark around them.

The faint thrum of tension that had plagued him since he had woken up twitched along inside him, enjoying the noise.

Stalking from one to the other despite how obviously hopeless it was, Anakin shook his head in furious disbelief. _Gone. Useless. Main board was shot out on this one. And this one. On all of them._

_Wait… what is that?_

Something had been scored in a blank, flat space on the last control panel on the right.

Anakin took a few steps toward it. _Is that writing?_

A string of Aurebesh words had been carved into the board with something crude but sharp enough to leave marks so deep they were still legible through the years of accumulated dust. Each character was jagged and uneven, made from frantic, repeated scratches in the metal, and Anakin felt a twinge of discomfort as he read them.

_don’t fix it_

“‘Don’t fix it?’,” he repeated aloud, puzzled.

“Like I could,” Isten said, coming to stand off to Anakin’s side but well out of reach.

“Like anyone could,” Anakin snapped. “Why would anyone do this? This far out in the middle of nowhere? Why would anyone kark themselves over like this?” He glanced up at Isten, recognizing in the middle of his shock a chance to see how much information the Sith would be willing to share. “I mean, what planet are we even on?”

“No idea,” Isten said with a sigh, looking down at the foreboding message, and Anakin could tell by the quick way he answered he was telling the truth. _Just like me_ , he decided with another wave of uneasiness at how confident he was in his assessment of his darker twin. _I always have to think for a second before I lie._

“What about your beacon?” Isten asked, flicking his gaze back up to Anakin. “Your ship had a beacon in it, right? Did it survive the crash?”

“I…” _So they know about the crash too._

Every space-worthy ship had a beacon, and now that Anakin thought about it, he had seen the hard case for it intact out by the wreckage they had walked past on their way into the woods. With any luck it would take ten, maybe twenty minutes to activate and set the right channels to reach Republic ears. “I don’t know,” he said as casually as he could, forcing down the worst of his anger in an attempt to outwit the Sith. 

Isten blinked and then tilted his head with a knowing grin, and Anakin realized with a scowl Isten likely knew the same about him when it came to lying. “Sure you don’t. But I won’t push you.” He tilted his head the other way, a wavy lock falling into his face. “I’ll leave it to my master to do that.”

Without thinking, Anakin jabbed two of his fingers up between them in the rudest gesture he knew, one that went all the way back to his childhood in Mos Espa. “Get out.”

Isten chuckled and strolled out in a wave of black linens and leather, lifting his hand in a jaunty salute Anakin knew all too well. “As you wish. Have a good morning, Anakin, but you know... I wouldn’t waste any time in here. You know fixing this thing is impossible.” 

The Sith seemed strangely and completely unconcerned by this fact, whistling as he disappeared off back into the rest of the house and leaving Anakin to glare in bewilderment at the remains of what had once been a comm center.

 

* * *

 

When Anakin returned to Obi-Wan half an hour later, having done one last check of every single control board in the comm center in a futile attempt to find one that had escaped the long-ago saboteur, Obi-Wan was finishing up his own salvage efforts.

He slid a small, open box out into the hallway, the dry hiss of it loud across the floor. Stacked high with familiar silver packages, it did nothing to improve Anakin’s disgruntled mood.

“We can’t ever escape these things, can we?” Anakin asked with a sigh, kneeling down to lift a few rations and inspect the writing on the side. “I’d almost rather eat the powder mix emergency ones,” he said, tugging on his belt for emphasis.

Obi-Wan leaned out of the pantry. “If you would like to try seventy-four year-old canned fruit and vegetables, please be my guest. I didn’t even try opening any of them.” _Any luck with the dish?_ came the silent question, slipping under his spoken words.

“Nah, I’ll pass, thank you.” _It’s not working and I can’t fix it. Someone,_ he frowned, thinking of how to describe the scene, _someone shot out all the circuitry a long time ago and left a note saying not to fix it. I’ll show you later._

 _Strange, but given our situation not the strangest thing we’ve seen this mission._ “Not all hope is lost, though.” There was an odd, hollow rattle as Obi-Wan picked something up inside the storage room and walked out, two slender grey poles in hand. “Fishing rods, in good condition. I was thinking we could try the river for a slightly fresher dinner? Get cleaned up, if nothing else.” _And check the wreckage for a distress beacon._

 _I was thinking the same thing, Master. And so was Isten._ He took the slim lines of plastisteel Obi-Wan held out. “You know I’m horrible at fishing.”

Obi-Wan sighed at the mention of Isten as he picked up the box of rations and walked back to the library, looking around as Anakin followed behind. “Where did he go?”

“No idea.”

“I haven’t seen Veris either.”

 _Good_ , Anakin thought to himself before opening his half of the bond to speak to Obi-Wan as they left the food on one of the side tables and set out back through the house toward the gardens and the forest. _He didn’t seem worried at all about being trapped here._

Obi-Wan gave a small snort of annoyance, his weariness showing through for a moment. _Arrogant brat probably imagines that they’ll let us set the beacon, and as soon as a rescue ship shows up they’ll knock us out at best, kill us at worst, take our place and be out of here without any questions asked._

Looking around at the rooms they had passed through in darkness the night before, Anakin was surprised at how relatively clean the house was now that he could take a good look at it and Isten wasn’t there to distract him. Beyond the dust and a few rooms rotting away beneath holes in the roof, their furniture moldering and a few plants taking root in the piles of dust and dirt that had accumulated under the damage, the house was in amazingly good condition given how long it had likely sat abandoned. Anakin wondered if the silent and motionless maintenance droids they passed every now and then had been the last to give out when the house had been abandoned.

_Anakin?_

_Sorry._ Returning to the conversation at hand, he snorted as he realized what Obi-Wan had said. _I’d like to see them try to impersonate us_. _Rex would know something was up immediately, even if Isten was able to somehow explain away their eyes._

 _Oh, Cody as well_ , Obi-Wan answered with a chuckle. _Not to mention Ahsoka, hmm?_

Anakin grinned for a second at the thought of Ahsoka giving Isten her famous glare of stony disbelief, and fondness welled up inside, stilling for a moment that nervous energy inside him. “Do you think they’re all ok?”

“Oh, of course. You know them. They’ll be fine,” Obi-Wan replied as they stepped out of the broken back door into the open air of the overgrown gardens, threading their way past vines and flowers especially lush after the rain the night before. “And as for us they won’t even declare us overdue for another ten standard days.”

“There are worse places to be stuck for a bit, I guess,” Anakin said as Obi-Wan let his hand trail along the top of a bush thick with fragrant white flowers, bruises and cuts standing out against his pale skin. “Nice weather. Roof over our heads. Library for you. Bunch of droids to tinker with for me. Minus the unearthly pull of the Force we can’t explain and our weird, evil twins from a heretical other dimension, we could have done a lot worse, Master.”

Obi-Wan snickered, gallows humor long a staple between them. “We’ll definitely have to recommend it to everyone at the Temple. ‘Go. Relax. You can truly find yourself there. We did.’”

“Heh.”

They walked on in silence into the cool, welcoming shadows of the woods, Anakin allowing his mind to slip into the ever-present hum of the Force as the fishing rods clacked together in his hand.

Out in the forest it was still inexplicably strong, even with the countless echoes of life all around them, and it made it even easier than usual for Anakin to jump from following one creature hopping along in the brush off to their left to the heavy, tranquil presence of an ancient tree up ahead.

Watching the area around him too carefully through the Force would make him anxious, but today it felt almost soothing alongside the impatient rhythm dancing in his head, something to focus on other the restlessness growing inside him.

As they rounded the corner on the worn path, dry leaves crunching under their boots, Obi-Wan took a fishing pole from him and nodded up ahead. _There’s the pile of stones we left when we came across this path._

 _You go ahead to the river, Master,_ Anakin said, handing Obi-Wan the other rod as well, confident he could handle things on his own and still a little worried about Obi-Wan pushing himself too hard. _I’ll get the beacon set up and meet you there._

_Are you sure?_

_I don’t feel them anywhere around,_ Anakin said, even as he conceded he hadn’t sensed them in the library when they had first met them. _I mean, we can’t feel them in the house but out here has to be different, right? The Force is strong out here but not as overpowering as it is right around the house._  

 _True_. Obi-Wan patted Anakin’s shoulder, clearly relieved not to be making the long hike back out to the ship. “Thank you,” he said to Anakin as Anakin stepped off the path into the moss and ferns. “Good luck. I’ll see you there.”

 

* * *

 

A brisk jog later, Anakin knelt over the beacon, knees sinking into the rich dirt as he flipped the hard case over and snapped the hinged catches open in a satisfying thunk of metal on metal. Debris from the wreck lay dented, burnt and curled all around him, but he only had eyes for the device tucked safely into several layers of durafoam inside. “Hello, beautiful,” he smiled, popping open the inner case to access the buttons and switches necessary to turn it on.

It was an older and cheaper model than Jedi ships usually came with, capable only of simple signals delivered to general channels, but it would do the job. Set to the right patterns, it would send a signal that would make it to the broadest channels first and then be instantly relayed along by the automated software, bouncing along to more and more specific channels until it reached sentient and finally Jedi ears. Anakin had rigged up this kind of hidden signal for him and his men before when they were in enemy territory, and he knew what to expect. _Scratch a few days_ , he thought with a muttered curse. _We’ll be here at least three or four weeks until it makes it through._

Glancing around, making sure he was alone, Anakin typed in a string of commands on the tiny keyboard, sitting back and letting out a sigh of relief when an inset light on the outer case began to blink a bright, almost blinding green. “There we are.” Closing the case with a snap, he picked it up by the simple rod handle that ran along the top and set off back toward the path, turning the top of the case in toward his side to hide the flash.

 _I’ll hide it somewhere in the house and then go meet up with Obi-Wan at the river_ , he decided, setting back off through the trees and ferns toward the path. The forest was silent, only the wind in the high branches and the calls of birds distant and lovely, and he wished he could relax and enjoy it.

But that low level of anxiety stayed with him as he hurried back through the gardens and into the house, settling on the little room stuffed with datapads they had seen the day before as a good place to hide the case. Turning the case onto its back, the light almost blocked completely, he slid the beacon under the dusty writing desk and pushed a box of datapads up on either side of it, adding a few more loose ones in a stack on top.

Satisfied with how well the case blended in with the junk around it, Anakin made his way back out, emerging into the sunlight and flowers of the gardens with nothing more on his mind than getting down to the river.

He was almost to the woods when a soft sound distracted him, a whisper carried to him from somewhere off to the side. It came from the edge of the gardens, where the trees of the forest almost brushed up against tall, unruly hedges sprawled out between the small, stately curves of pergolas.

_Master? Or Veris?_

Anakin took a cautious step back onto the cobblestoned path and wandered toward the noise, hand resting on his saber at his hip and trying to see through the narrow hedges and leafy trellises that rambled along in a maze-like pattern. There was no point to trying to find a single path through to the center: the original design had long been lost to the wild waves of green creeping in from the woods.

The maze lay redolent with the sweet scent of the purple clusters of maidenstears that had overgrown nearly all of it, and Anakin took a deep breath as he tried to decide what to do.

 _There’s no reason for Master to be here. And if it’s Veris I should go back_. Yet he kept walking toward the faint sound of someone talking, curiosity getting the better of him as he tried to parse what was being said. _But if it is the two of them, now is my chance to listen in_.

Taking slow, silent steps along the narrow corridor created by the overgrown hedges around him, Anakin strained to hear the conversation better but could only hear Veris’s voice, the words still too quiet to make out but the tone calm and assured. _Is he sending a message to someone?_

A break in the maze lay just ahead, marked by the elegant doorway of a vine-laden trellis and the roof of a pergola off to the side, and Anakin realized what Veris was saying too late to draw back before he caught a glimpse of the man through the slats of the trellis.

“Come now, Isten, you can take more than that.”

Anakin froze, unable to look away.

Veris was sitting on a stone bench, leaned back against the waist-high railing that ran around the pergola, black clothing a sharp contrast to the faded wood and stone. His auburn hair shone in the dappled sunlight that made it down through the fragrant, lush clusters of flowers hanging from above and his eyes were closed, a pleased smirk on his face.

Isten was kneeling with his head between Veris’s legs, with his back to Anakin and also fully dressed, which somehow made what he was doing even worse, even more wrong and yet captivating in a way that shot straight through Anakin and left him barely able to breathe.

Veris let out a pleased, ragged sigh, one hand tight in Isten’s hair as he began to guide his head up and down. “There. Such a good boy for me, aren’t you?”

Anakin stared at Isten’s hand clutching Veris’s side, at the drop and rise of the other shoulder that meant his other hand was working somewhere in front of him, and swallowed.

_He’s... he’s..._

Isten whimpered, the exact, yearning pitch Anakin made when he was aroused, and the muffled sound of it, the reason it was muffled, finally broke through Anakin’s trance and sent him whirling, hurrying back as quietly as he could manage through the crooked, thick hedges. No one pursued him, but the sound of Veris’s voice, low and confident and encouraging, stayed with him as he stalked into the woods and back onto the path to the river.

 _He was… all the four hells, he was…_ Anakin couldn’t even say the exact phrase as he strode angrily along through the dirt and weeds and tried to calm down. Left completely speechless, all he could see was his twin knelt before Veris and all he could hear was Isten’s muted cry of pleasure.

Anakin had never considered himself cold, or particularly wrapped up in the idea of celibacy some Jedi, Obi-Wan included, seemed to be strict followers of. There had been a few pleasant tumbles into bed with local women on missions and with Padme a handful times before they had broken it off amicably, knowing better than to make a playful affair between a Jedi and a Senator something too serious for either of them to handle.

There had even been a bit of enjoyable fumbling around with a male agemate back at the Temple when they had been senior Padawans.

But none of those experiences had prepared him for this, for seeing what was essentially his twin on his knees in front of a man who had Obi-Wan’s face, and the image brought a rush of shame and heat so stark he ended up veering off into the trees well before he reached the river. _I’ve never thought about him like… like that._

That was true, in the strictest sense. Anakin didn’t like to admit it in the harsh light of day, but there had been a very few, very secret times in the darkest hours of night when he had fantasized about a stronger, more confident man having him, maybe even dominating him like Veris clearly did Isten.

Now, as he stumbled into a small clearing well off the trail, Anakin found he was equally entranced and horrified at this new idea of Obi-Wan taking on that role.

 _He is my friend, and he was my master, and I shouldn’t think about him like that_ , Anakin told himself, even as he leaned against a large trunk, now out of sight of the path. _He would never want to do something so… wrong._

The tree’s bark scraped rough against his back through his tabards as he fumbled with his pants, breaths coming short and fast at the friction over his swelling erection. His body, it seemed, was perfectly willing to accept the notion even if his mind rejected it.

Groaning, Anakin rolled up eyes up toward the canopy of green overhead and the bits of blue sky wavering through. _I can’t go face Obi-Wan like this. He’ll notice and he’ll ask me what happened and… and I can’t look him in the eye and tell him that. I just, I just need to take care of this. That’s all._

 _It’s this place. It has to be. It’s this place and it’s kept me on edge and that’s it. I’ve been anxious all morning and I just need to work off some nervous energy. That’s all. That’s all_ , he tried to reassure himself as he bit his lip to stay quiet, eyes fluttering shut as he found the stiff length of his cock and pulled it free into the cool forest air. _I am not… I do not want that. I don’t. I don’t._

He had never done anything like this outside, all of his own pleasure sought and found in dark, hidden places and times, and felt ashamed that that fact aroused him even more. Stroking harder, he tried desperately to think of nothing but the smooth heat of his palm wrapped tight around him, his pace quickening as he tried to come as fast as he could.

_Please, come on, please..._

He strained against his hand as his other gloved one fell back to steady him against the trunk. Breathing hard and steady through his nose, fighting the urge to moan, Anakin looked down at his fingers working up and down the thick, firm length of his cock.

It took a little while but his body finally lost itself to the simple, hard rhythm of his hand, and Anakin was adrift in perfect, searing nothingness, almost to the point of release when the image of Veris and Isten suddenly rose again in his mind.

_Such a good boy for me, aren’t you?_

He came so hard it knocked a ragged moan out of him, a weak, vulnerable sound drifting up into the trees as the first line of hot white fell across the damp dirt in front of him.

Sagging back against the tree, Anakin let out another whimper as he continued to stroke himself, unable to stop, giving in fully to that deep, forbidden idea of what it would feel like to be in Isten’s place, to be happily and obediently on his knees with Obi-Wan hard and deep in his mouth.

“M-Master,” he whimpered, spilling cum hot and fast along the ground, metal hand clenching so hard against the tree trunk the dry crack of bark whispered in his ears.

When the last delicious wave of orgasm had receded, Anakin slid down to sit against the tree, legs askew as he closed his eyes and fought to regain his breath. Gasping and panting, he wondered with deep, biting shame what was wrong with him. _I shouldn’t want to be that way. Especially with him. I shouldn’t. I shouldn’t._

But he did.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> So what do you think? How doomed is Anakin? Did Veris and Isten know he was there? Doesn't everyone want a pergola- and naughtiness-filled overgrown hedge maze in their backyard? Or is that just me?
> 
> Thanks for all of your support! Y'all are the best! And yes, I still haven't caught up on comments, but I will try, I swear!


	4. Trust

Consciousness floating in a light meditation, Obi-Wan studied the seven datapads neatly laid out in front of him along the sun-warmed flagstones, a row of burnished metal against rough stone.

He was sitting on the steps leading out from one of the mansion’s many arched doors to a patio that sprawled out from the western side of the structure and lay ringed in a low carved railing suggesting waves. The view here was that of a large pond just beyond the patio, weeds and overgrown plantings crowding up to the edge of it but the water itself still and quiet with Cirese lilies blooming in bright bursts of pink and white along the surface.

In the room behind him, through the double set of doors they had propped wide open to let the breeze inside, he could hear Anakin tinkering with one of the deactivated maintenance droids they had found. It was a familiar sound, and for a moment Obi-Wan felt at peace, looking at the tranquil pond as he listened to Anakin working.

_It’s good to keep him busy in times like this. And he’s been so tense, even more than I would expect, these past two days. Since the day we set the beacon._

“Master?” Anakin called. “Did I leave any tools out there?”

Obi-Wan pulled himself out of his trance, gently folding the trace of worry he felt for Anakin into the back of his mind, and glanced around. “No, it doesn’t seem so. Are you missing one?”

“Well,” Anakin’s voice grew louder as he walked out to take a look himself around the patio, “These D-class models always need this certain kind of clamp-wrench for a few parts, and when I popped open that tool kit just a little while ago to see if it had one I swear there was one of them in there. But now I can’t find it.”

Obi-Wan patted the steps next to him and Anakin sat down. “Perhaps you set it aside somewhere and forgot. You’ll find it, I’m sure.”

“Yeah, I guess. Are they on yet?” He pointed at the datapads.

“No. Usually it’s only an hour for a solar-powered one, if I recall correctly, but who knows how much more primitive these older models are. We’ll wait and see.”

“So what did you pick to read?”

“Not sure,” Obi-Wan smiled over at him. “There weren’t any titles on the back of them. But I’m assuming they’re all the personal writings of whoever owned this place. The same crest we’ve seen about the home is engraved on the top of all of them.”

“True. And they were in that little writing room.”

Neither added _where the beacon is_ out loud, but for a moment Obi-Wan’s mind drifted to the case blinking green and tucked out of sight beneath the writing desk that Anakin had shown to him that first day, after they had discreetly doubled back and around the estate several times to make sure their Sith twins weren’t following them. “Perhaps there will be something in these that explains the odd nature of this place.”

Anakin ran a hand through his hair and looked away. “That would be nice.”

“Still on edge?”

“Yeah. It’s not getting any better.”

“Would you like to meditate?”

“I’m not that bad off, Master,” Anakin grinned, but Obi-Wan saw a trace of anxiety in his eyes.

“How is the droid coming along?” he asked, motioning back over his shoulder, not wanting to stress Anakin further for the moment.

“Not too bad. I’m going to do a test run with one of those extra power packs we found later on today once I’m sure the wiring won’t short out. And once I find that stupid clamp-wrench.” Anakin stood and walked around to look for the missing tool, eyes on the ground as he spoke. “You?”

“Read, I think. And I was thinking this afternoon we could go together, for safety’s sake, down to the river? Do some foraging on the way there, do some fishing, bathe and come back? I for one am tired of being able to only wash my hands and face.”

“You’re going to make me wash these clothes, aren’t you?” Anakin asked, tugging at his own sleeve as he nudged aside a vine with the toe of his boot. His tabards were draped over one of the chairs in the library, and Obi-Wan had a feeling they were going to stay there for a while. The weather was getting hotter, now balmy in the evenings as well, and Anakin had never been one for formality when he didn’t have to be.

“Now that we have determined nothing dangerous appears to live in the river, yes. And our new friends seem content to leave us alone for now. I haven’t seen them since we saw Isten the morning he showed us the food.”

Anakin grunted and Obi-Wan frowned, concerned at the flicker of anger across their bond. “Have you?”

“No,” he grumbled, patting his tunics and pants to see if he had left the wrench in a pocket. “I just, I don’t like them.”

“I know, Anakin. They are… unsettling.”

“Yeah, that’s one way to-- hey!” Anakin walked over and knelt down over the row of datapads, his shadow cool grey against the stones beneath him. “This one turned on!”

“Did it?” Obi-Wan stood and took a few steps over just in time to watch the other six flicker to life, each showing on its title screen a crude black and white rendition of the house’s insignia.

“Are they locked?” Anakin asked, already reaching down to touch the nearest screen.

The crest fell away and lines of text scrolled up, but Anakin only gave them a scowl of confusion. “Guess not, but what language is that?” he asked, handing the first datapad that had turned on up to Obi-Wan.

“Telladorian. I should have known,” Obi-Wan said with a faint smile as he accepted the awkwardly heavy device. “Telladorian culture is very ancient and sophisticated, but as in all cultures ‘new money’ types are often more ostentatious in their spending.” He gestured around at the mansion and the gardens. “Fully outfitted and vaguely classical style pleasure estate, and all of the expected accoutrements, built at what must have been enormous cost in the middle of Force-forsaken nowhere? Just for the aesthetic appeal? New-money Telladorian. But this isn’t Telladoria, unless it lost a moon while we were away.”

“Huh. So you can read these?”

“I’m a little rusty, but yes, I should be able to. Knowing them, half of these journal entries will be written in lyrical verse.” _This will be a pleasant little challenge to keep my mind occupied_ , Obi-Wan thought gratefully as he squatted down to skip his hand along the rest of the screens, bringing up the first page on all of them and comparing dates as he scrolled. “Now let’s see which one of these is first. Did that tool kit you found have a scoring pen in it?”

“Yeah, I think so.”

“Could you bring it to me? I want to check the dates and label what order these datapads go in before I start reading.” 

“You got it.” Anakin stood and wandered back inside as Obi-Wan stroked his beard and began flicking through the pages of the one nearest him, slowing just enough to see the date on each entry. _Let’s see what we can learn about this place, hmm?_

 

* * *

 

Two hours and a successful foraging hike through the woods later, Anakin waded through the cool shallows of the river, enjoying the hot afternoon sun on his back and the drops of water falling from his wet hair onto his shoulders as the forest sat in lush waves of green all around him.

A bath or swim was always a delight for him, something that made him feel rich and luxurious no matter how simple the surroundings, and beautiful places like this made it feel all the more decadent.

On Tatooine men were murdered for the amount of water it took to fill a Temple bathtub, and Anakin had never gotten over the wonder of having a lot of it all in one place. Rivers, oceans, lakes: anywhere and anytime he could he would strip down and swim, moving with a natural grace his survival instructor at the Temple had been impressed with the first time he had shown Anakin’s class the basics of swimming.

The strange hum of the forest and the estate still buzzed in the back of his mind, but it was quieter here in the river, the gentle flow of the current and the physical exertion of swimming helping Anakin calm down enough he could push away the beginnings of any of the guilty imaginings about Obi-Wan that had been plaguing him at random, inopportune moments since he had seen Isten and Veris together.

Obi-Wan was in the water a little further down the way, moving backwards in lazy strokes, chest and shoulders pale and his auburn hair wet and hanging in his face. Anakin watched him as he swam along, happy Obi-Wan was relaxing for once.

Their clothes were spread out to dry on the large, flat rocks that jutted out into the river on the other side of Anakin, already half dried on the hot, black stone. They were still torn and battered, but they could always patch them up later.

Two bags of berries and a string of fish hung from one of the trees near the bank, all but one Obi-Wan’s catch. _You have no patience, Anakin_ , Obi-Wan had told him. _You have to have patience._

Anakin didn’t mind. He knew patience was never going to be one of his strengths.

And as he floated along in the cool water, the sun bright and the sky blue overhead, he decided this wasn’t a bad way to spend a few weeks before they rejoined the front. _Minus Isten and Veris, I kind of like it here. The river anyway. Maybe the woods._

_Just not the house._

It wasn’t just the pulse of the Force there, or even the darkness Veris and Isten had talked about the first time they met: Anakin couldn’t quite explain it but he sometimes he felt like he was being watched by something that wasn’t the Sith.

He and Obi-Wan had spent the last day cleaning out one of the large bedroom suites on the second floor, airing the room out and clearing all the dust away before they dragged in a second synthdown mattress from the next room over to put down next to the bed already there. The library was too open, they both agreed, to continue sleeping in there, and last night they had spent their first night in the room, agreeing they would rotate on who got the larger bed.

Tonight, now that they had had a proper bath, as Obi-Wan would say, they would fit the two mattresses with sheets and pillows they had found sealed away in storage and were now airing out over one of the low walls by the front entrance, weighted down by rocks to keep them from blowing away.

It was ridiculously lavish compared to what their usual wartime accommodations were, but Anakin still wondered if he could talk Obi-Wan into sleeping out in the gardens, or even down here by the river.

_He’d say it was too far out in the open, too risky. And he’s right._

Anakin had never met anyone as sensitive to the Force as he was, and it left him unsure of his own instincts at times like this. _Maybe I’m overreacting. Obi-Wan’s mentioned the house makes him uneasy at times, but there’s plenty of reasons for that._

 _Two, especially_ , he grimaced, diving back under the water and swimming out further, working out the twinge of frustration and anxiety that thinking of the Sith twins brought.

_They’re probably what’s causing that feeling. I just wish I could focus in on them through all of the interference. I haven’t been able to yet._

The steady rhythm of his arms and legs faltered at the next idea that followed, one as cold as the deeper water here further from the shore. _Maybe I can’t sense them because I have the dark in me too._

He plunged down into the water, forcing himself to swim to the bottom and rake his metal fingers along the river stones there before he turned and pushed back up toward the surface. _No._

_I am not like them!_

_I am not!_ he repeated to himself over and over, chopping through the water in powerful strokes and kicks of his feet until he surfaced in the shallows with a gasp for air, pushing wet locks of his hair out of his face.

When he did Obi-Wan was treading strokes back and forth, watching him curiously from down the river. His master’s warmth glittered bright and reassuring across their bond like the sun on the water between them as he reached out with it. “Anakin?” he called, concerned. 

“Just getting in some exercise, Master,” he said, panting and now back in control enough he could send a quick touch of reassurance back through the bond. _I am not like them. I never will be_ , he told himself with far more confidence now, allowing himself to fall back into the cool water and let it swallow him with a splash.

 

* * *

 

After they made their way back to the estate, both feeling tired but pleasantly refreshed, Anakin went to go scrounging for more tools and droid parts around the mansion while Obi-Wan decided to read in the library, resting on one of the long couches they had cleaned. The scent of evergreens lay faint in the air and bird calls echoed down through the open windows over him as Obi-Wan settled in with what he had been able to deduce was the first data pad.

As he had expected, it began with a poem that didn’t keep its lyrical quality when brought over to Basic, but the idea was clear enough as he read, occasionally checking a Telladorian-Basic dictionary he had found on the shelves in what appeared to be the reference section.

_My dearest wife, my lady of the flowers,_

_Beckons me to her side_

_And I cannot help but listen to her sweet songs._

_I could sit and listen all day to her voice._

_My angel, my love,_

_I dedicate this simple home to you._

_May your flowers grow here_

_Forever and forever_

_As they have grown in my soul._

_Beautiful blooms in humble dirt._

Obi-Wan contemplated the poem and the sprawling complex, how nearly all of the flowers and fruit trees they had seen in the garden were imported from other worlds, and shook his head. _Ah, young love. So this place was a wedding gift?_

Lost in thought, running through several possible translations of a particularly complex sentence and flipping back and forth in the dictionary, Obi-Wan had just begun to get into the meat of the first entry when a question sounded across from him. “What are you reading, Master?”

The voice was Anakin’s but there was a teasing lilt to it that was out of character, and Obi-Wan glanced up, puzzled for the briefest of moments before he registered the golden eyes fixed on his.

_Isten._

The Sith was lying on the couch across from him, boots propped up on one padded arm and hands folded behind his head on the cushions piled up against the other. It was exactly the same way Anakin liked to lounge when he was comfortable, and it almost unnerved Obi-Wan as much as the realization Isten had walked right in and gotten comfortable without him noticing. _I must have assumed he was Anakin when he walked in. Stupid, Obi-Wan! You have to be more careful than this!_

“When did you come in?” he asked with as much ice as he could manage, sitting up straighter and checking he still had his saber on his belt.

Isten grinned up the ceiling. “Just now. Buried in that thing, weren’t you? Good thing I didn’t mean you any harm.”

“That remains to be seen.”

Isten sat up and rested his arms on his knees, leaning forward across the space between them. “So you didn’t answer me. What are you reading?” He smiled at him, biting his lip in a playful invitation, and Obi-Wan sighed and rolled his eyes.

“Just something to pass the time.” He took his eyes off Isten to look around, sensing no immediate danger from him, and was relieved to find they were alone in the library. “Where is Veris?”

“Don’t know. Probably meditating.”

Obi-Wan brought his gaze back to Isten, carefully considering the man in front of him. Isten’s clothes were perfectly clean and without damage, his hair immaculate in that annoyingly effortless way Anakin’s always was, and while he wasn’t wearing his outer robe he still wore his heavy black tabards as if the heat did not bother him in the slightest. “Why are you still in your tabards? Anakin wormed his way out of his yesterday.”

“Master likes me dressed like I should be,” Isten shrugged. “So I am.”

Frowning, Obi-Wan set the data pad aside and crossed his legs as he leaned back into the couch, resting his ankle atop his knee as he reclined back in thought. He was still wearing his own tabards, of course, even though the balmy weather and lack of an audience was tempting him to strip down a bit. _We are still Jedi no matter where we go_ , he told himself. _Our clothing reminds us of that._ But Isten’s answer both disturbed and intrigued him in the way it suggested Veris had that much control over him. Control Isten was clearly willing to give him despite his own no doubt formidable powers and skill with a saber. “Isten? May I ask a question?”

“Sure, Master.” He leaned back in a creak of leather and stretched his long legs out, resting his hands in his lap.

“How long have you been a Sith?”

“Oh, that’s not what you really want to ask me.”

“It’s not?”

“No, you want to know why I listen to Veris when Anakin doesn’t listen to you.”

Obi-Wan stroked his beard to hide the thinning of his mouth, reminding himself it was better to ignore the slight in favor of what he might able to learn from it. “I suppose that thought has crossed my mind, yes. Why you are so eager to follow his lead.”

“Why don’t I show you?”

Isten stood up and took a few lazy, confident steps to stand in front of Obi-Wan before he sank down to his knees in front of him in an elegant motion of submission that was impossible to look away from. His gaze never left Obi-Wan’s, golden with curiosity and a vulnerability that was strange given the smirk on his face.

“Isten, what are you doing?”

The Sith licked his lips and slid his hands up to his own collars, tugging at the fabric there. “You know what I’m doing, Master.”

“Isten,” Obi-Wan sighed with as much exasperation as he could manage, willing himself to stay still and not shift around where he sat. The way Isten’s tanned fingers caught in the black linen, slowly pulling it away from his collarbones, from the fine line of his throat and the firm muscle of his chest, was not helping matters. “You don’t have to do this. Whatever Veris told you to do, it’s not going to work. You don’t have to act like this with me.”

“You think he forces me to be this way?”

“Yes.”

“He doesn’t. Besides, you like it,” Isten murmured, slipping his gloved hand up to his mouth while his other hand drifting down below his waist, black against black, to disappear beneath his tabards. “You want me. You want Anakin, anyway,” he teased, dragging his thumb against the soft pink of his bottom lip as he began to fumble with his pants under the layers of his clothing.

“I do not,” Obi-Wan coldly declared, determined not to give the Sith the satisfaction of seeing his discomfort. “What makes you think that I want Anakin like that?”

“Because Veris wants me. Like that,” Isten whispered, biting down on the thumb of his glove, eyes locked on Obi-Wan’s with a perversely innocent desire given the situation. 

Left speechless, Obi-Wan could only watch as Isten closed his eyes with a sigh, rocking his hips up a little against his hand as he continued pulling at his tunics. “Ah… Master, please… Master, I want you, please Master, I want you insi--”

“Stop that. Now.”

The command rang out clear and cold in the dim quiet of the library before Obi-Wan knew he was saying it, all higher thought gone in a frantic, confused need to make Isten stop touching himself, stop saying those things in Anakin’s voice, stop writhing about right there in front of him on the floor.

Isten froze in place and his hands returned immediately to his lap, his head bowing in instant obedience.

Obi-Wan was horrified at the brief spark of deep, hungry satisfaction he felt before shame and guilt rushed in. _Force, I’ve just done to the boy what Veris does to him._ Disgusted with himself, he was still struggling to find a way to apologize when Isten spoke, calm and respectful.

“That’s why, Master. That’s why I listen to Veris when Anakin doesn’t listen to you,” he said, looking up at Obi-Wan with patient affection. “He isn’t afraid to give me what I need.”

“What you need?” Obi-Wan repeated, standing up and fighting the blind urge to back away, to get away from the kneeling Sith and the whisper of heat curdling into anger in his gut.

“Control,” Isten replied as if explaining the simplest thing in the world. “A guiding hand.”

“Ordering you to do… to do things… is not a guiding hand, Isten. Whatever he did to you, however he turned you, this is wrong!”

Isten readjusted his collars, appearing to consider Obi-Wan’s words, and much to Obi-Wan’s relief he stood back up and took a long step back to give him space. “You think he enslaved me?”

“Yes.”

“Well,” Isten looked at Obi-Wan, and for a brief moment Obi-Wan felt naked under those golden eyes, like Isten could see every dark urge that he had ever had. “Why don’t you come see tonight? Come rescue me from him if that’s what you think I need?”

“What?”

Isten leaned in close but did not touch him, and Obi-Wan realized the Sith had not touched him at all the entire time he had been in the room. It made the awful, visceral tension singing through him that much worse. “Veris has me every night, you know.”

“Isten…” Obi-Wan warned, unsure he wanted to hear what he was about to say.

Isten held out his hands in a conciliatory sweep before he began tugging his clothes back into place, the fine line of his chest disappearing under layers of black. “So come see. See if I need saving. Don’t worry,” he added with a small, knowing smile. “I’ll help you find your way to us.”

Obi-Wan said nothing, willing himself to be still and cloaked with the Force enough he could look past his embarrassment and anger at the feelings Isten had stirred within him. _For all of his attempts to shock me, to… to tempt me, this is still Anakin in a way. I have to try to help him. Somehow._  

Isten bowed before strolling out with his newly arranged collars back where they belonged, and Obi-Wan watched him go, staring at the archway the Sith passed through for a long while before returning to his reading.

 

* * *

 

The afternoon faded into the purple shadows of evening, Anakin and Obi-Wan eating around the fire they had built in one of the empty stone flowerbeds out in the gardens. Obi-Wan thought about telling Anakin what Isten had said, but it seemed like bad timing. Anakin was relaxed for once, thinking out loud about what had gone wrong with the wiring in the droid he was working on and ways he could fix it without the wrench he still couldn’t find.

Obi-Wan answered with nods and assent in the right places, when it came to be his turn sharing what he had gleaned from the first few entries of the journal as they extinguished the fire with buckets of water from the pond.

Smoke hissed up thick and heavy into the sky as he spoke. “Samal, the owner, apparently had the estate built as a wedding gift for his wife. I might skip the first journal entirely if it continues on like it does. Lots of construction details and overwrought descriptions of the loveliness of the woods.”

“Huh. Any reason he built it all the way out here, wherever here is?”

“None yet. He at least was very clearly in love. Almost every entry includes some sort of poem or dedication to his wife at some point. She is his, let’s see if I can remember... ‘shining lady of light,’ ‘bright princess of flowers’, ‘purest dawn within my soul’, that sort of thing.”

“So what happened with this place?” Anakin mused, kicking dirt over the last embers of the fire to leave them in dim moonlight and the acrid scent of wood smoke.

“Not sure. I would guess she either passed or very quickly fell out of favor with him for some reason.” In the pitch black of the night Obi-Wan knew Anakin couldn’t see the reluctant frown on his face as they turned back toward the house and he considered without any success what he had been mulling over the whole afternoon: how to stop Veris from hurting Isten.

_This whole idea is ridiculous. Isten is a monster. A Sith. He doesn’t need saving. This is almost guaranteed to be a trap of some kind._

_But he is still Anakin, an Anakin whose master, whose friend, failed him beyond all measure. If there is any good left in Isten it is my duty to try to help him. Even if Veris intends some sort of trap for me and is using Isten to set it._

“Hey, do you see that?” Anakin whispered, pointing toward the sprawling blackness of the house. 

As Obi-Wan’s eyes adjusted to the night, he saw what Anakin meant. They had left one candle burning on a ceramic dish by the back door so they would be able to find their way back, but the faint orange glow of another one lit a perfect rectangle on the opposite end of the mansion from their room, a window down on the first floor. “I do.”

“Huh. I guess that’s where those two are staying,” Anakin muttered as they started to walk back, but Obi-Wan barely heard him, remembering Isten’s promise to let him know where the two Sith would be.

 

* * *

 

The total darkness the house fell into after sunset dictated when the two went to bed, and within an hour of their meal Anakin was asleep in the large bed, shallow breathing drifting down to Obi-Wan as he lay on the mattress next to it and attempted to meditate away his misgivings regarding what he was about to do as the windows lay open and the rustle of the forest murmured in the background.

_It’s simple. If I go and one of them is not there, then they were trying to lure me away from Anakin and I wake him with a warning through our bond and will come right back here._

_I can’t bring Anakin with me. He won’t understand wanting to help Isten, and I don’t want to have him see… anything he doesn’t have to._

_I’m just going to see. To see if Isten really is asking for help._

Waiting a little while longer, holding as steady as he could in a light mediation as the two moons outside rose higher into the sky, Obi-Wan finally rolled off the mattress and stood, tying his undertunic together and throwing on another one in the dark despite the mildness of the evening before strapping on his belt and saber.

Anakin slept on, lying on his stomach with his face buried in the pillow and the sheets tugged up almost over his head. Obi-Wan had complained more than once in the past about how soundly Anakin slept, but tonight he was grateful for it. Slipping on his boots and waiting until he was in the hallway to light a candle, Obi-Wan shielded it with his hand as he moved away from the permanently open door and down toward the main staircase that led to the first floor.

The weak, flickering light of the candle cast strange shadows everywhere, and Obi-Wan moved slowly and cautiously down the stairs, almost reaching out with the Force from habit before he caught himself. Here, if he touched the Force, there was such a powerful, constant roar of it, like the tide coming in and out, that he couldn’t discern any particular people or things like he usually could. Even when he wasn’t making an attempt to attune with it, it still tickled the back of his mind, especially in the house, and he wondered for a second how Anakin was faring, being so much more sensitive. _I’ll have to ask him,_ he thought as he made it to the last step and held the candle up to shine a little more light.

Someone was standing in the hallway to his left, a looming black silhouette motionless in the middle of it. Obi-Wan took a step back with a sharp jerk, the candleflame guttering with the sudden movement, and when the light rose again the shape was gone.

 _Trick of the light. You’re being too jumpy,_ he told himself as he turned away down toward the opposite hall, but he looked back over his shoulder twice as he went, watching the shadows his candle cast stretching long and weird along the passage already bathed in cold moonlight.

Cupping his hand over the candle, allowing his eyes to adjust, Obi-Wan saw a pale spill of warm light almost all the way down at the end of the expansive hall and blew his own candle out, setting it down so the scent of smoke would not give him away as he drew closer.

Moving slowly toward the ring of candlelight, footsteps careful and silent, he steeled himself for whatever he might see as best he could, fists clenching at his side.

It seemed from the amount of light washing out that the door to their room was also permanently slid open, and Obi-Wan strained to hear anything as he approached.

There was the low murmur of a Coruscanti accent-- _my voice--_ something that bothered him almost more than Veris having his face. And over that, sharp, breathless noises he placed as gasps a moment later. _Isten._

 _I could go back. I could go back to our room right now and not see any of this_ , Obi-Wan told himself, taking a deep breath and knowing it was already too late for that. _No, I have to see if he’s alright._ _Then I’ll leave. I am not an Initiate. I am a grown man with enough sexual experience of my own to not be fazed by whatever this is going to be._

He crept up to the doorjamb and peered around, breath catching in his throat at what he saw.

Isten and Veris had claimed a grand suite not that different from their own, this one painted in deep greens and edged in gold where Anakin and Obi-wan’s featured greys and whites.

The same massive bed in this room lay off against the windows, pushed up against panes all left open to the night air, and atop the bed lay Isten on his back, wrists tied to the headboard and wearing only the light gauze of an open, black tunic.

Obi-Wan knew he wasn’t wearing any other clothing because his lean, tanned thighs were wrapped around Veris’s hips as the older man thrust slowly against him, fully dressed save his robe and boots.

“So perfect,” Veris whispered breathlessly against Isten’s cheek, his hands tight on Isten’s hips, pinning him in place as he drove into him. “Aren’t you?” The billows of his own open tunics draped down over Isten’s body, hiding the most secret part of him and somehow making it more lascivious than if they had both been completely naked.

 _It’s… it’s me… doing that to… to Anakin._ All of Obi-Wan’s plans, all thoughts of what he might do, fell away into shock, and he didn’t take a step into the room or one back away from the door, unable to look away from the scene before him as his mortification fought with his instant, undeniable arousal.

The candles lining the windows cast the pair in a beautiful, ethereal glow, gold sparking in Veris’s hair and his shadow falling across the flat planes of Isten’s stomach as they moved together, every shift of Veris’s hips drawing another moan from Isten.

“Master,” he begged. “Please, ah, more, please, please,” came the pleading whimpers, so unlike Anakin, so unlike the stubborn, independent man Obi-Wan knew. And yet that quiet, breathless begging entranced Obi-Wan as he watched, as he noticed how Isten’s hands curled into fists and opened again with Veris’s movements, the long, dark fingers of his left hand soft against the bare, hard metal of his right.

 _He doesn’t have his glove on over it,_  Obi-Wan wondered in the back of his mind, one more small note of surprise amid the deep shock holding him firmly in place where he stood. _Anakin hates for anyone to see his hand… but Isten doesn’t care?_

 _No. He's had the glove on every time I've seen him. He doesn't care if Veris sees it._ That simple truth, more than Isten’s eager writhing, stunned Obi-Wan. _He does trust him. Implicitly._

“Mine,” Veris whispered, pleased, one hand sliding inward through the draping of fabric bunched at Isten’s hips, and Isten arched his back with such a needy groan Obi-Wan felt it down to his bones.

 _I should go,_ he told himself furiously as a new wave of heat stole through him. _I shouldn’t be here._

Despite the embarrassment that came along with it, he didn’t move, only watching as Veris began to stroke Isten with a lazy, teasing arc of his wrist.

It wasn’t him. But it was. Isten wasn’t Anakin. But he was.

And Isten was so eager for Veris, so happy to strain his hips up into Veris’s hand, to whisper, “Master, Master…” in hoarse lust, tanned chest and hard nipples lovely and golden in the candlelight.

“I want you to come for me, Anakin,” Veris said calmly, and panic overtook Obi-Wan for a harsh, breathless moment until he saw the yellow flicker of Isten’s eyes open wide in another ecstatic moan. _It’s not Anakin. That is not Anakin._

“Yes, Master,” Isten gasped, biting his lip, the bed creaking as Veris shifted over him, sitting up. The open line of Veris’s tunics fell back as he rocked his hips in a shallower rhythm against Isten, revealing the thick, stiff length of Isten’s erect cock and the steady, demanding way Veris pulled and tugged at it as he looked down at Isten with lusty pride and utter satisfaction.

“Hurry. You know I don’t like to be kept waiting.”

“Yes, Master… yes… ah...”

Obi-Wan felt his throat dry up, heart pounding, as Veris worked Isten to release, at the sight of the muscles of Isten’s arms straining against the rope, at the white spray across his smooth stomach, at the low croon of Veris telling Isten between kisses what a beautiful boy he was as Isten shivered in orgasm under him and Veris reached for the knotted rope wound around the headboard.

And then, just as Obi-Wan shifted his weight to step away, to leave this horrible, mesmerizing scene, Veris pulled Isten up and bound his arms again, this time behind his back, Isten’s tunic now bunched down around his arms and his broad shoulders bare.

Isten, limp and sated, struggled to sit back up as Veris murmured something to him, and then Veris was on his back on the bed, Isten sliding one leg over him as Veris reached up to help steady him. “Look at you,” Veris murmured approvingly at the white trailing down Isten’s stomach, at the disheveled waves of his hair and the flush on his cheeks.

Isten responded with a dazed mewl of pleasure as Veris’s hand slid between his thighs, and Obi-Wan closed his eyes in a desperate attempt to will himself to leave, but all he could think of was the first time a man had ridden him like this, a slender, playful noble curious about the Jedi sent to help his city, the two of them left alone too long while Qui-Gon had been out in diplomatic meetings. _Stars, it felt so good_ , he thought, and then a choked gasp brought him back out into the darkened hallway.

Veris was pounding up into Isten as Isten pushed himself downward, Veris’s hands on Isten’s lean hips to keep him balanced. There was no gentleness here, only Veris enjoying himself as Isten groaned with lips wet and bright from their kisses, back arched as he happily took thrust after thrust in blind, wordless pleasure.

“Anakin… my Anakin…” he growled.

The raw lust in Veris’s voice as he drove up into Isten so hard he shook finally broke the spell keeping Obi-Wan there.

He spun to hurry off back down the hall, snatching up the dish with the candle on it so fast he almost dropped it.

The need to escape that room, to get away from Isten’s incoherent cries of pleasure and the possessive snarl on Veris’s face, was so primal Obi-Wan didn’t remember coming back up the stairs or making it back to his and Anakin’s suite.

So when he realized he was standing in the doorway, it took another second for him to understand why the room looked wrong.

Anakin wasn’t there.

“No!” he cried, spinning back around and catching a glimpse of movement far down the shadowy passage. _Anakin? Anakin!_

The shape stumbled toward him, walking strangely, but a faint answer crept through their bond. _Master?_ The question was sleepy and disoriented, as if coming to him from a place much further than the other end of the hallway.

Wordless, Obi-Wan ran to Anakin and lifted the candle, stomach churning in fear that this had all been a trick, that the Sith had used Anakin somehow in that horrible little tableau.

But the warm yellow light showed him in his own brown undertunic and pants, hair no messier than it usually was, and a glazed, hooded look in his eyes that answered Obi-Wan’s questions immediately and sent a cold wave of relief through him.

“Anakin,” he said gently, heart still pounding as he reached out and took his arm. _Sleepwalking. Stars, he hasn’t done this in years._

Mortified at the possibility he might have been gone when Anakin could have needed him, the uncomfortable desire brought on by what he had seen earlier vanished in a biting sense of shame as he led Anakin back to their room and into bed. _What in the first hell is wrong with me?_ he berated himself as Anakin tucked his gloved hand under his pillow and yawned an incoherent word or two at Obi-Wan before he fell asleep once again. _What was I thinking going down there?_

Sleep proved much more difficult for Obi-Wan to find that night as the room returned to silence and the stars drifted by in their slow spiral overhead.

He lay on the mattress on the floor and listened to Anakin’s soft, even breaths, unable to stop thinking about the way Isten had moaned and writhed under Veris, the lithe lines of his body trapped beneath Veris’s hands as he shuddered in orgasm.

It took hours of meditation before sleep pulled Obi-Wan down into merciful blackness, ghosting in on the first rays of dawn light.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Whew! So what did you think? (I think one thing we can all agree on is that the Sith are winning at this point.)
> 
> And thank you, thank you for reading! <3 This is a very fun story for me to write and I'm grateful for all of your kudos and comments!
> 
> The next update will be in the usual two weeks' time.


	5. Beloved

Another cloudless, balmy morning rose warm and blue around the mansion as Anakin and Obi-Wan sat on the large western patio that had become their daytime living space in the two weeks since the crash, the forest beyond it humming quietly with rustling leaves and the chirps of insects drifting down from the trees. Obi-Wan sat on the far edge of the patio, facing out toward the lily-strewn pond, back straight and eyes closed in a deep meditation that came through their bond as a touch of cool and soothing energy even though Anakin was not engaged in it himself.

Anakin did not look up from the droid guts he had currently laid across his lap in careful skeins of wires and chip boards, but he closed his eyes and let his mind brush across Obi-Wan’s aura. The relentless white noise of the house that Anakin did his best to ignore receded for a moment before rushing back in like the tide swirling back up onto a beach, but he sighed in relief at the brief respite anyway.

The heavy mediation Obi-Wan favored seemed to be harder for his master to find than usual lately, he had confessed to Anakin a few days ago, but compared to Anakin Obi-Wan seemed as perfect as ever.

And that was the problem, Anakin observed as he hunched lower over the complicated wiring harness, glancing over at Obi-Wan’s still profile silhouetted neatly by the green of the gardens. _He’s just… how did I never see it before?_

Obi-Wan had finally given up his own tabards the day before, leaving them neatly folded over a chair in their room, and now as he sat cross-legged in the morning sun the elegant line of his shoulders and the lithe planes of his body were evident under the thin tunics he wore.

Anakin lowered his tools and watched him, taking note of the way the sun caught in his hair, running his gaze along his pale features. He was careful to guard his thoughts and not let any stray through the bond back to Obi-Wan, but it was getting harder to do the more time they spent here in this strange place.

_What would it be like… with him?_

That was a question Anakin had answered with several fantasies and quiet, furtive trips out to the woods since the day he had first given in to such imaginings, but it still dried up his throat as he looked at the handsome man that featured in them.

 _No. He would never want me like that_ , Anakin told himself, once and then again more firmly, but he was still staring, almost daydreaming, when Obi-Wan turned toward him and opened his eyes, the peaceful waves of the Force around them dissipating into the morning heat around them.

“Anakin?”

“Yeah?” he asked with what he hoped was only a mild guilty blush.

“Are you alright?” 

“Sure. You ok?”

“Yes, I’m fine.” Obi-Wan stood and stretched, walking over to him, and Anakin shoved his earlier imaginings down and away as best he could, returning his attention to the repair work in front of him. “How is it going?”

“Well, I never found that clamp-wrench, so it’s a lot slower than I’d like. I’m hoping to finally get at least one of these little guys up and working today but it sure would be easier if I had one of them.” 

Obi-Wan opened his mouth to answer and then paused. “Wait, I saw one this morning. When I went into the toolbox to get some binding tape for one of the datapads.”

Anakin blinked up at him, surprised. “You did? Are you sure?”

He leaned back, earlier discomfort forgotten, and reached out with the Force to pull the heavy grey box over. It came in a harsh slide across the stones, and when he popped the cover open he let out a soft, bewildered Huttese curse as he reached in and plucked the missing wrench from a pile of various tools in the topmost drawer.

It glittered silver and black against his gloved palm as he turned it over once and then again, happiness at finally finding it struggling with his confusion. “Nice. Brand-new, or at least unused, I mean, given how old this place is. But I don’t get it… I checked in here at least five times before I gave up.”

“Perhaps our ‘friends’ are playing games with you,” Obi-Wan said with more annoyance than Anakin was used to hearing from him, folding his arms and nodding back toward the mansion. “They seem to take pleasure in causing us difficulty.”

“Did you see them again?” Anakin asked, willing himself to sound as casual as he could.

“Not in the last week, thank the Force. You?”

“Same.” Eager to change topics, Anakin bent back over the wiring harness as Obi-Wan settled down on a large cushion across from him that they had dragged out of a parlor a few days before and picked up a datapad that had lain next to it charging in the sun. “How goes the translating?” 

Obi-Wan relaxed, apparently pleased with the new direction of the conversation himself. “Well, I wanted to finish all seven before drawing any final conclusions, but with half of them done I can at least explain some of the oddness of this place. Do you remember that planet they tried to make Ahsoka a god on? The tribe that worshipped the Force?”

“Oh, yeah, the one with the green skies and rings you could see.” He stopped for a moment as a twinge of homesickness tightened his heart. “You still think she’s doing ok? And Rex and Cody?”

“Oh, she’s fine, I’m sure of it,” Obi-Wan said with a genuine, gentle smile of affection for their shared Padawan. “Rex and Cody too. Without us around to create all that extra incident paperwork for them they’re probably the most well-rested they’ve been since the war started.”

Anakin laughed fondly, but sent up a traditional prayer from his childhood just to be sure. _It can’t hurt._ “Yeah, good point.”

“We’ll be back with them in what, one more week? Two?”

“Yeah, should be around then. So why did you bring that planet up?”

“Ah. Yes. Well, actually, I got ahead of myself.” Obi-Wan held out his hand and one of the other datapads drifted over to him from a stack just inside the propped-open doors that led into the mansion. “Let’s see... first of all, the reason this estate was built here seems to be that the wife was Force-sensitive.” Voice trailing off as he skimmed through the datapad, he found what he was looking for and narrowed his eyes at the page as he translated what he read.

“‘My waking hours and dreams are…’ then a particular phrase that literally says ‘like mirrors facing each other’ but means ‘the same’. So it’s ‘My waking hours and dreams are the same because my beloved is in them, and as she guides me in life she has guided us here, to this fountain of perfection, to this…’ ah… ‘glittering’, yes, ‘glittering… whirlpool of light and mystery’.”

“So this place has always been strong in the Force? Ok. I don’t suppose this guy happened to mention at least what planet we’re on, huh?”

Obi-Wan gave him a dry smile. “You would be amazed how little information most of these entries actually contain once you take away all of the pretty flourishes. I swear the three datapads I have read so far could have been condensed down into one.”

“So the owner’s wife picked this place and he built it for her?” 

“It would seem so. Now, returning to my original point and the reason I brought up Ahsoka and that tribe. As you may recall from your history classes, on many worlds there comes a point in time where there is a strong, sudden interest, sometimes even an entire religion, that builds up around the natives’ awareness of and experience with the Force. Or attempts to experience the Force.”

Anakin listened carefully as he began stripping the coating off of a delicate wire. “I think I remember covering that at some point."

“On Telladoria, around the same time frame this estate seems to have been built, there was a great swell of interest in the Force. A fad, to put it bluntly. People swore they were suddenly Force-sensitive, frauds made a mint selling alleged Force artifacts, and even loose cults formed around the idea of contacting and communing with the Force.”

Twisting the bare end of the wire with another one, Anakin frowned. “Cults?”

“More like excuses for debauchery. Usually the idle rich would gather up a group of friends and go off on long, rambling searches for Force-rich places. Few found any, most that did chancing across some long-abandoned temple or Jedi and Sith battle from ancient times. Either way, a typical journey would take months and include generous amounts of substances that would supposedly make them more open to the Force and its will, but of course only caused hallucinations.”

“But you can’t make someone who isn’t Force-sensitive into someone who is… So the owner and his wife had this place built as a spice den? Basically? Just a place to get drugged up and stare at pretty colors with a bunch of their friends?”

“You would make a terrible Telladorian, Anakin,” Obi-Wan nodded with pride. “You said in a few sentences what it took the entire third datapad to say.”

“But the Force _is_ really strong here,” Anakin mused. “If, like the wife, any of them were actually sensitive to it, with no training and a pile of whatever kind of spice they were taking… that could explain the control room. What happened in there.”

“It could. Paranoia, hallucinations, possibly violence, as you said. Right now, as of the third datapad, though, things still seem to be going quite well for them. But I agree, they are clearly drugged out of their minds most if not all of the time at this point in my reading. Nonsense about sunrise-colored serpents and poisoned jewels and other bizarre things.”

Anakin found himself thinking back to a spice den in Mos Espa that his mother always hurried him past as a child on the way to the local market, a strange shop where the curtains over the entrance were never left open no matter how hot the day became and home to men with too-thin arms and too-large eyes that stumbled in and out silently. “So these people were just addicts? Addicts with money?” he said, a new disgust in his tone as he glanced up at the ornate building looming over them.

“More than they knew what to do with, apparently. And there is one more thing that may be pertinent to the odd atmosphere of this place.”

Obi-Wan flicked to the next page of his notes, absently stroking his beard. “They had so much money the owner also imported his entire ‘Force artifact’ collection here as well. Where is…? Ah, here we are. ‘I surround the most beautiful rose of my beloved with every… humble stone and talisman I can…’ get?, no, ‘procure’, ‘I can procure, humble flowers for a perfect blossom, but none of their unseen fragrances can hope… to match hers.’”

Anakin rolled his eyes, wondering how Obi-Wan had made it through more than a few pages of the florid writing. “If even a few of them were real, that would go a long way in explaining the weird feel of this place. Should we try to figure out which ones are, do you think?”

“No, I don’t think so. There’s so much interference in the Force, from the area itself and possibly some of the artifacts, we’re essentially Force-blind at this point. I believe it would likely take actually touching each one and opening your mind to it to check.”

Obi-Wan set down the datapad and gave Anakin a concerned look. “If there is a Sith artifact mixed in, that sort of close contact could be disastrous for either of us in this particular place, even with our training. You, especially, being so much stronger than me in that regard.”

“Yeah, good point,” Anakin conceded. “But that could explain why Veris and Isten were pulled here from their world,” he said thoughtfully, the wiring in his lap forgotten for a moment. “The power of this place combined with an actual Force artifact?”

“That is a definite possibility.”

“Do you think they’ve figured any of this out?”

Obi-Wan’s gaze shifted to the cool shadows of the mansion, distant for a moment as he considered the question. “They might have known from the moment of their arrival but decided not to tell us. Either way, they don’t seem very concerned by their current predicament.”

“Yeah. I don’t understand why.”

“Think about it, Anakin. This would have to be a gift for them, from their point of view. A whole new universe to corrupt and the perfect disguises to do it with. As we have said, all they have to do is leave us alive to make sure we get a call for help out, wait for the rescue ship, and be the only ones left alive to stroll aboard when it lands.”

Anakin shifted where he sat, uncomfortable with the next idea that logically followed. _We’ll have to duel them before then._ The flicker of concern on Obi-Wan’s face showed he felt the same way, and Anakin sent a hesitant observation across their bond. _They won’t want to be captured. It’ll be to the death. And I don’t know if I can fight someone with your face, Master. Not like that._

Obi-Wan frowned and reached over to squeeze Anakin’s shoulder, hand warm through Anakin’s light tunic. _I feel the same, Anakin. But we will do what we must, when the time is right._  

Anakin sighed and looked away, giving a reluctant assent back across the golden bridge floating between their minds. _Yes, Master._

 

* * *

 

The rest of the morning passed quietly for the two of them, Anakin quickly falling back into repair work made much faster and simpler by the discovery of the tool he had been missing and Obi-Wan losing himself in the fourth datapad of the seven they had found.

When the sun had almost climbed overhead and they had retreated to the shade of the room just inside the open doors, Obi-Wan was still deep in idioms and metaphors that would go on for half a page at a time, not looking up as they moved inside and muttering possible conjugations of a verb to himself as he sat back down on one of the room’s long couches they had dusted off.

Anakin waited until he had decided on the one he wanted and then volunteered to go foraging for lunch to add something to the cooked fish they had left over from the day before.

Obi-Wan agreed with quiet thanks and, blinking as he pulled himself out of his reading, watched Anakin disappear down the garden path with a swell of fondness. They had known each other so long, the other’s habits and likes and dislikes, that Anakin understood Obi-Wan would sometimes forget to eat when he was busy with something like this.

But after a few sharp arguments when Anakin was still a Padawan, he had never argued or told Obi-Wan to stop working. He would just bring food and leave it within reach, and it would get eaten and peace would be maintained.

Sinking back into his reading, Obi-Wan kept at it for almost another hour before he had to admit temporary defeat in the face of a particularly convoluted passage. _Perhaps I should take a break_ , Obi-Wan told himself, setting the datapad aside and stretching _._ _A short one, at least._ He stood, the hardwood floor under him creaking once.

Another creak sounded, and at first he wondered if it was an echo before he placed it as coming from somewhere deeper inside the house.

_Footsteps._

Obi-Wan’s first instinct was to call Anakin back from the woods, but he resisted. _Whichever one this is, they haven’t turned violent yet and have no reason to for now._

 _And I don’t want Anakin around them if I can help it._ A flash of the two Sith, tangled together in their dim room, brought a spark of guilty anger to life inside Obi-Wan and he did his best to smooth it out into nothing as the sound of someone approaching grew louder.

_Calm, and in control. That is what I must be if we are to stand a chance against them when the time comes._

He sat and waited, gaze fixed on the interior door that lay permanently open like so many others in the house and hands loosely clasped in his lap. _Which one will it be this time?_

The footsteps were almost to the room, slow and steady, and an unexpected fear shot through Obi-Wan out of nowhere, a certainty that it would not be Veris or Isten to round the corner but something worse, something utterly inhuman and out of place in this peaceful little room with the floral scents of the garden drifting in from outside.

Obi-Wan blinked and shook his head to clear it of the idea. _Focus._

“Hello there.” Veris stood in the doorway, a shadow in crisp lines of black, a hint of amusement in his golden eyes. “Were you expecting someone else?”

“No,” Obi-Wan sighed, pinching the bridge of his nose before dropping his hand to stroke his beard. Isten, he noted with more than a little shame, he now knew how to get rid of. Veris was another matter entirely, and it did not help at all to think about the last time he had seen him, lying between Isten’s thighs. “Should I even ask how you knew I was here?”

“You two follow a very simple pattern in your day-to-day routine. Very predictable.”

“My apologies,” Obi-Wan said dryly, retreating behind the familiar protection of sarcasm.

“Oh, none needed.” Veris sat down across from him, leaving his fingers curled in his lap exactly as Obi-Wan had his, and Obi-Wan swallowed the urge to tell him to stop mimicking him. The black clothing and the yellow eyes should have made Veris otherworldly, impossible to fathom, but Obi-Wan was disgusted to realize just how normal it looked on him now that he studied Veris in the soft wash of reflected sunlight from the patio stones outside. _He wears it so easily. He? I? But… how, how did it happen? How could it?_

Veris smirked, the faintest shift of his moustache and beard. “You’re wondering about me.”

“How did it happen?” Obi-Wan asked, words as cold as his gaze as he reminded himself to be on his guard. “Since you’re here, you might as well tell me. I’ve been wondering.”

“Hmm?” Veris turned his head to survey the gardens outside, elegant and composed. “About what?”

“You know what I mean. Which of you Fell first? And why?”

Veris chuckled, a low, unpleasant sound as he brought his yellow gaze back to him. “Oh, Obi-Wan,” he chided. “You know the answer to that.”

Obi-Wan forced himself to keep looking at him, even as he felt a bitter fear take hold at Veris’s words. “You did, didn’t you?”

“Don’t act surprised, Obi-Wan. Deep down, you’re not. You know you’re not.” Veris shook his head, raising an eyebrow.

“I would never. I would never Fall. I would never touch the dark,” Obi-Wan protested, fists curling in his lap.

“What about Naboo? Did you not touch it then, in your fight against that monster after he killed your dearly beloved master?”

Obi-Wan felt his entire body tense but remained in place, anchoring himself with the thought that Veris had done this before with the memory of Satine. _This is just another callous attempt to rile you. Do not give in._

But as much as he loathed admitting it, there was a grain of truth in what Veris said. Obi-Wan’s memory of that awful, fateful duel was a blur on the best days, but there was an undeniable trace of the dark side lacing it, not all coming from Darth Maul. Like a whiff of smoke where no fire could be seen, all the more ominous for its subtlety. _There is no point lying to him. He is me, as terrible as that fact is._ “Yes. Is that… when it began? Your Fall?”

Obi-Wan remembered with a sudden, intense sorrow Qui-Gon’s pained face as he died, the gentle touch of his fingers to Obi-Wan’s cheek, and the anguish that had swept through him at the horrible knowledge his master could not be saved, that those were the last few seconds of his life draining out in Obi-Wan’s arms. _Was it then?_

“When Qui-Gon died? You would like to believe that, wouldn’t you?” Veris leaned forward, lowering his voice as if sharing a secret between the two of them. “Come now, Obi-Wan. The dark has always been within you. Long before Master’s death.”

“It has not,” Obi-Wan replied with enough ice it would have startled Anakin to hear, but Veris only smiled as if Obi-Wan had agreed with him instead.

“You had such a temper as an Initiate. And you were so frightened no one would take you as a Padawan. You worked hard, so very hard to be accepted, and you never stopped and yet still no one appreciates you, do they?”

A flush began to warm Obi-Wan’s face and throat as he glared at Veris. “I only want to help people. That is what a Jedi does.”

“They take you for granted, your skills and your intellect, and they demand more and more with every passing day,” Veris continued, unfazed by Obi-Wan’s hard, flinty stare. “And what do you get in return? Do you get anything at all you want? Did you get to keep your master? Did you get to keep any kind of relationship with Satine?”

“It is my honor to serve,” Obi-Wan said, fists so tight in his lap he could feel his short nails digging into his palms. “What I want does not matter.”

“How noble of you,” Veris said in mock awe, giving a small bow from his seat. “But perhaps, Obi-Wan, perhaps one day, you will look around and see the truth of things. That you are powerful, and strong, and that it is finally time to throw off the shackles of those lesser than you and take what you want. What you are owed.”

“I am owed nothing,” Obi-Wan repeated, trying to shut out Veris’s words before they could worm their way inside him, before he could acknowledge they were not as utterly foreign as he fervently wished for them to be.

“Not even Anakin?” Veris whispered, standing and walking back to pause in the doorway that led further into the darkened mansion. “Is he not yours? Could you not beguile him with pretty words into following you, Obi-Wan? You know him so well, it would be easy. And does he not belong by your side? At your feet?”

“I would never, never force Anakin into the dark!”

“Oh, you don’t force him. You lure him. And it is so easy, because he trusts you. You cause him to Fall, Obi-Wan, and you are happy to do it. Because he is yours. And he belongs with you. The first and best-loved of what is owed to you after all of those years of noble, pointless sacrifice for the Jedi Order.”

Anger shot through Obi-Wan, a heady mix of rage and horror, and he jumped to his feet. “Get out,” he snarled. “And stay away from Anakin. Both of you.” 

“We are not the only threat to him. Will you avoid him as well?”

“Out!”

Veris shrugged and lifted his hand in a farewell wave as he turned back out into the hall, the same pattern of slow and calm footsteps that had brought him now receding away into the interior of the house.

Obi-Wan stood motionless in the middle of the little room, frantically grabbing at stray feelings and thoughts, burying his face in his hands as they swirled through him: Qui-Gon’s last, trembling breath, his own bleak desperation to become a Padawan, the warmth he felt when Anakin fixed him with one of his rare and honest smiles, the dark lust that had bloomed at watching Veris take Isten.

_He is wrong. I will not Fall. I would never do that to Anakin. Never. I--_

_Master!_ Anakin’s mental voice interrupted, a burst of angry tension, and Obi-Wan looked up, startled, expecting to find Anakin standing in front of him.

_Anakin? Where are you?_

_In the small writing room. I was coming back from the woods, and I got this feeling I should check the beacon, and…_

Obi-Wan was already striding through the inner hall toward Anakin and the room, not liking how Anakin’s words trailed off in pure fury. _What? What is it?_

 _It’s been turned off_ , Anakin managed to say through his anger. _It hasn’t been transmitting at all, for who knows how long._

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> A happy Fourth of July to my fellow Americans!
> 
> Thanks as always for reading, and I love seeing all y'all's comments and kudos and thoughts on our poor boys and their Sith twins. <3
> 
> Apologies for the late update (life got in the way and I had to update Coda first), but I should be back on my two-week schedule after this.


	6. Midnight

It had been three days since Anakin and Obi-Wan had moved the beacon under the cover of darkness, hiding it away under a bench nearly overgrown with blood-red roses out in the northern sprawl of the gardens. The new location was in view of their bedroom and much harder to get to, the thorns of the rosebush clawing along Anakin’s glove and just missing his face as he shoved the case out of sight, the transparasteel inset now painted over to keep the telltale green light from blinking.

But Anakin couldn’t stop thinking about it, his growing unease with the house and his feelings about Obi-Wan needing something to focus on that he could actually do something about.

He had suggested they start checking it every day to make sure the Sith hadn’t shut it off again, but Obi-Wan had made the point that the more often they visited it the more likely Veris or Isten would see them. Once every few days would be enough, his master insisted. If the Sith somehow found it again and turned it off, they would only lose a few days.

Anakin didn’t know how to tell Obi-Wan that every day was starting to feel longer and longer with the mansion looming over them, even with trips to the forest and river.

But, as usual, Obi-Wan’s logic was sound, and so on the third night after their unpleasant discovery Anakin lay in the bed of their shared room and stared out the open window at the black swell of the gardens where the beacon lay concealed, the planet’s two moons hanging empty and bright overhead.

Obi-Wan slept on the mattress on the floor beside him, the usual strength and warmth of his presence dimmer than Anakin remembered it being when they had first arrived.

Anakin wasn’t sure if it was the mental noise of the house doing this, the static that seemed to be growing steadily louder in his mind as the weeks went by rising to block out the comforting light of Obi-Wan’s Force signature, or if Obi-Wan himself was suffering some of the same anxiety Anakin was.

_Is it possible? He’s been on edge since the day we found the beacon off._

Laying shirtless atop the sheets, Anakin rolled over away from the gardens and toward Obi-Wan, closing his eyes and trying to enjoy the balmy air drifting in through the open window behind him. Reaching out with the Force through the silent din of the house, he let his aura twine instinctively with Obi-Wan’s and tried to match the steady rhythm of his breathing.

_He is here._

_I am here._

_We are together._

Anakin smoothed out a stray, nameless worry snarling the Force around Obi-Wan, his master not stirring from sleep but body relaxing more. _Nothing will happen_ , Anakin thought across the bond, happy to have someone to worry about other than himself for the moment.

_I am here._

_You are here._

_We are together._

_Nothing will happen._

For a long while, Anakin lay on his side atop the soft sheets, taking careful, deep breaths in time with Obi-Wan and listening to the soothing hum of crickets droning outside as he traced his eyes along the ghostly lines of the room’s ornate scrollwork.

When sleep finally overtook him in a warm, heavy wave, he did not roll back over, and so he did not see the black shape that had stood over him on the other side of the bed for nearly an hour.

 

* * *

 

Sensations ripped through Anakin with jarring force: the loud, scraping hiss of his lightsaber, the stinging blue of it as it waved in a deadly, endless arc around him.

_No. Not that night. Please!_

The awful tearing of the Force as he snuffed out one life and then another, the hard dance of the muscles in his shoulders and arms as his blade swept low for the screaming younglings and higher for their panicked mothers.

They were easy to kill, so much easier than the warriors had been. It barely took a flick of his wrist, no bladework at all. Like punching through deactivated training droids at the Temple.

 _No. No, please I don’t want to see this again_ , Anakin thought from outside of the dream, but his saber didn’t slow and the awful, keening cries did not stop.

He came to the edge of the dune-snake nest, and slashed his way through the last elder trying to crawl away. _Where are you going?_ he heard himself snarl to the corpse. And then he looked up, just as he had in real life, out across the vast, pitiless undulations of the desert, at the three cruel slivers of moons hanging in the void above it.

They were the only witnesses to this, to the slaughter he had brought to this pathetic little village and the blinding, soul-consuming rage that had driven him to it.

There was nothing but death behind him and all around him, but it was not enough, not enough by far. His bloodlust was insatiable as he fell to his knees and let out an animal scream of grief and fury. He wanted to murder every Tusken Raider that lived, every worthless man in the cities that had been too cowardly to stamp them out first, every decadent noble that lived in pampered safety while his mother had suffered and died.

 _Give me the power,_ Anakin had begged the sky through his hoarse gasps and tears. _Give me the power to slay them all and I will do it. I swear I will do it._ He hadn’t known if he was pleading with what the Jedi called the dark, or with the vengeful father-god of the desert, or something even older, but in real life it hadn’t mattered. Nothing had answered him.

In the real world there had only been the cold, arid night and the merciless gleam of the moons across the sand as he had crumpled over and sobbed.

But here, in this dream, it was different. A sudden dread crept through Anakin as something moved behind him and all around him, a rustling where nothing should be left to move.

Anakin looked back over his shoulder, tears stinging his eyes, to find the dune snakes were back on their feet. All of them.

Wordless, standing where he had cut them down, the only movement the glowing red of their fatal wounds seething as the wind blew across them.

Their shadowed faces turned as one toward him.

_Welcome home, Anakin._

He jerked awake with a strangled cry, slumped in a chair in a darkened room too large to be the bedroom he had fallen asleep in. Moonlight glinted in precise rows of spines all around him as the white noise of the Force skittered through him, louder than anywhere else in the mansion.

_The library._

The last remnants of the nightmare still clinging to him, Anakin took a shuddering breath and then another, trying to forget the mangled silhouettes watching him with dead eyes and the acrid scent of ozone-charred flesh sharp on the desert breeze.

“Sleepwalking, huh?”

Anakin jerked to his feet and whirled to find Isten stretched out in the matching chair next to his, a delicate display table between them. A carved crystal sat inside an old-fashioned glass box atop the table, a black oval with a ruddy heart, and Isten reached out to run his finger along the edge of the case as he spoke. “That’s not a good sign, Anakin.”

Reaching for his saber, Anakin realized too late it was back in their room: he was shirtless and barefoot, left far too vulnerable for his liking and heart and mind raw from the awful dream.

“The house is getting to you,” Isten observed quietly from his seat, folding his hands in his lap, neatly arranged collars and tabards mocking Anakin’s disheveled state.

“Which is why you turned off the beacon, isn’t it?” Anakin snapped, taking a step back and frantically trying to gather his thoughts and calm himself. “You want it to get to me.”

“I didn’t turn off the beacon.”

“Veris, then! Whatever.” Anakin ran a hand through his hair, tugging on it harder than he needed to, trying with the sensation to force himself back into the present of his body and the situation at hand. “Where is he?”

“My master is sleeping.” Isten remained where he was, watching Anakin start to pace back and forth.

“We’re,” Anakin felt bile rise in his throat, but he said what he had been thinking for some time anyway, desperate to understand what was happening to him. “We’re not that different. Me and you. We should be, but we’re not.”

Isten gave an elaborate shrug as Anakin stopped in front of him, the Sith’s eyes watchful hints of gold in the shadows.

Anakin knew he should turn around and leave, that barely awake and frightened out of his mind by a nightmare was the worst possible way to have this conversation, but he had to know. “So how is it the house isn’t getting to you?”

A patient grin spread across Isten’s face. “Your problem is that you fight the dark. You don’t let it in.”

Anakin snorted, crossing his arms and his short nails digging into them as he tried to control his breathing. _Of course you’d say that._

“You fight everything. All the time. You’re too scared to let any of it in.”

“And you’re not scared? How do you accomplish that, Sith?”

“Do you remember the day you came here? When Master ordered me to stop before I attacked you?”

Anakin remembered very clearly, and in fact had returned to that particular moment twice in a haze of lust during his clandestine trips out into the woods. “What about it?” he asked as nonchalantly as he could, glad for the dark of the library hiding his face.

“How did that make you feel?”

“I’m not answering that.”

“Not out loud, anyway. Fine.” Isten stood and walked over to look up at one of the windows, staring out into the night thoughtfully. “I’ll tell you my secret, Anakin. Our secret.” He smiled back over his shoulder, voice soft and understanding as it drifted over to Anakin. “You want attention. You want your Master’s attention. More than anything. So much that you act out in the hopes of being punished.”

Uncomfortable, Anakin shook his head. “Yeah, I love getting in trouble. Sure.”

“You’re right. It’s not perfect. But it’s the only way you know of to get his attention focused solely on you, and that’s what you crave. Because in the middle of your anger and embarrassment when he is lecturing you or punishing you for whatever you’ve done, there is a longing for more of it.”

Turning and leaning against the wall, Isten nodded to him, folding his own arms across his chest in a creak of leather. “You’ve never said it aloud, but deep inside yourself you want to give him control. You know that’s what you need. A guiding hand when things are too much for you.”

“I want to give him control over me? I am not a karking slave. I will never be a slave again,” Anakin said with disgust, but stayed where he was out of morbid fascination. _How could someone like me ever say something like that?_

“A slave has no choice in who has control over him,” Isten answered matter-of-factly, tapping the back of his own neck to indicate the spot where they both knew an implant had once rested. “You do. And if you make that choice, if you give yourself completely and wholly to your master and abandon everything you have made yourself think you are, the noise will stop. There will only be you, Anakin. At peace and in harmony with the world rather than struggling against it.”

 _You’re insane. That’s all this is. Or some kind of trick._ “What does a Sith know about peace?”

“What does a Jedi? Tell me, how is your Master of late?”

Anakin growled a curse. “I liked you better when you talked less.”

“Anything else, little skybrother?” Isten yawned as if he hadn’t heard the insult, walking over to sit on one of the benches in front of the large carved relief in the center of the grand chamber, its careful detail lost in the long, deep shadow cast by the moonlit windows behind it.

“Don’t kriffing call me that.” Anakin watched him disappear into the relief’s shadow, barely able to see him as he sat down. “You Fell first, didn’t you?”

Isten chuckled, a new unpleasantness in his voice. “Anakin, do you really think it would happen any other way?”

The expected answer twisted Anakin’s gut nonetheless. “How?” he asked with so much reluctance it took a full second to say. _I need to know how so I won’t do it. I won’t make Obi-Wan Fall. I won’t._ “How did you get him to join you?”

“You know Master cares about you. More than any good Jedi should. And I used that. Oh, it was so easy.” Isten took on a mocking, weak tone. “‘Please, Master, come with me.’ ‘Please, Master, don’t leave me alone in the dark.’”Anakin took a step back in disbelief and horror as Isten continued in a harsh snarl. “He is mine. Mine. I would have killed him if he didn’t join me. No one else gets to have him. But he did join me. My perfect Master by my side, in the dark with me. Forever. Just as yours will be.”

“No. I will not do that to him,” Anakin hissed, the words as much an attempt at comforting himself as they were a rebuke. “I don’t have to Fall.”

“Are you sure about that, <snake killer>?” Isten said, dropping into the slave creole they shared as Anakin whirled and stormed out of the library, suddenly and desperately wanting on a level far below rational thought to escape that room and Isten’s malicious, confident words.

_He is just like me. And he Fell. I don’t want to Fall. I don’t want to take Master with me. Make him like Veris. No. No. Please._

_I don’t want to become that. But maybe it’s too late._

_Maybe I’m meant to become that._

Isten’s taunt burned through him the whole way back up the stairs and into their room, and he was so lost in the awful dream-memory of what he had done on Tatooine he didn’t notice the shift in Obi-Wan’s Force signature when he came back into their room.

_Please don’t be awake. Just let me lie down and--_

“Anakin?” Obi-Wan asked, stifling a yawn but concerned as he sat up on the floor. “What is it?”

At the gentle question heard so soon after Isten’s gleeful cruelty, Anakin felt something inside him crack.

He sat down roughly in front of Obi-Wan, tears in his eyes. “Help me, Master. Please.”

 

* * *

 

Obi-Wan looked at his former Padawan slumped over in front of him, wondering for a moment if this was somehow a continuation of the strange dream he had had earlier in the evening.

While Anakin had slept, Obi-Wan had found his thoughts wandering to the past, swinging back and forth until they settled for awhile on a much needed happy memory: one of the proud occasions Qui-Gon had warmly complimented him.

They had been on Takodana for an extended mission tracking smuggler bases out in the wild, and Qui-Gon had pointed out a small white flower growing in threes in a meadow they were hiking through one afternoon. _“The locals call it ‘snowheart’. It’s a strong little plant, and does well in adverse conditions, no matter how harsh. Like you, Padawan.”_

At the time it hadn’t felt to Obi-Wan like a dream, lying there on the synthetic mattress with the crisp scent of the woods coming in through the window and Anakin’s Force presence a warm, dull ember above him on the bed. But when Obi-Wan had sat up, feeling restless and deciding a walk around the gardens might do him good, the view out of the window had stopped him cold.

The gardens below were covered in the little white flowers, their petals silver in the starlight but gathered in their distinctive clumps all the way out to the edge of the grounds where the forest leaned in close.

Obi-Wan had stared, and blinked, but the flowers remained. _I am dreaming_ , he had told himself, and when he looked over at Anakin and then back again the flowers had gone.

He had lain back down on the mattress and told himself to sleep, to end whatever odd dream this was. And he thought he had.

But now Anakin was sitting in front of him, shaking and almost in tears.

Obi-Wan took him by the shoulders and reached out through the mansion’s faint, ever-present haze in the Force to both reassure him and see if he was actually there, and the pain that shot into Obi-Wan’s mind indicated in startling clarity that he was in fact awake.

“Anakin?” he whispered, sending soothing heat back across their bond, worried. “What happened?” _Oh no._ “Was it the Sith? Did they do something?”

“No.”

“Are you in danger? Are we in danger right now?”

“No, Master,” Anakin whimpered, scrubbing his hands over his face. “Please don’t hate me. Please don’t hate me. I don’t want to be like Isten. I don’t.”

“Shh,” Obi-Wan said, squeezing Anakin’s arm, rattled by how upset he was but relieved he wasn’t hurt. “I would never hate you, Anakin. Would you like to go for a walk?”

In situations like this Obi-Wan had learned the more Anakin moved the easier it was for him to calm down, and there had been a few times where the two of them had walked half of the Senate District, it seemed, before Anakin could settle down enough to talk about whatever was bothering him.

Anakin only nodded, shrugging on the tunic Obi-Wan quietly handed him and absentmindedly tying it shut before they tugged on their boots and hooked their sabers on their belts, setting off out through the gardens and Obi-Wan letting Anakin choose their direction.

It seemed to be as straight a beeline away from the house as the garden paths would allow, which Obi-Wan couldn’t blame him for given what he himself had seen in the dead of night there. When they made it to the edge of the grounds, the forest rising like a black canyon around the little path that led to the river, Anakin didn’t pause, simply activating his saber to light the way and striding into the darkness.

Obi-Wan followed, glancing back at the estate and resigning himself to the fact that if this was some sort of distraction so the Sith could hunt for the beacon there was little he could do about it. Anakin came first, and his aura was so jagged with fear and shame Obi-Wan was genuinely worried about him.

The stars shone overhead in a narrow river mirroring the path they walked, the moons already out of sight behind the trees and the air still and almost cool under the forest canopy. Night birds called out and small creatures rustled out of their way as they walked along, Obi-Wan waiting for Anakin to speak.

When they were roughly halfway to the river, Anakin stopped, an abrupt scrape of his boots on the dirt path. He powered his saber down and turned to face Obi-Wan, face almost hidden in shadow and the after-image of the dazzling blade floating across Obi-Wan’s field of vision. “Master?”

“Yes, Anakin?” He reached out, hand falling gently onto Anakin’s shoulder. “What is it?”

“I… I did something horrible, Master. And I never told you. I never told anyone.”

“Whatever it is, Anakin, I’m sure--”

Anakin’s words tumbled out over Obi-Wan’s attempt to reassure him, anguished and breathless. “I murdered the raiders who killed my mom.”

In the shocked silence that followed, he drew a shaky breath, his body trembling under Obi-Wan’s palm. “All of them. Their whole village.”

“Anakin…” For the second time that evening, Obi-Wan wondered if he were dreaming, but the world stayed in unforgiving, perfect focus, from the cricket calling out nearby to the weight of his own saber hanging at his belt.

“I’m a monster. I killed them all and I should feel guilty but I don’t because they murdered my mom and I would do it again! I would...”

A dozen emotions battered Obi-Wan before they drowned in his rising shock, but at the sound of Anakin’s voice dissolving into sobs all he could think of was the vicious pleasure coursing through him at the moment he had slashed Qui-Gon’s murderer in half, and all of the time he had spent since that horrid day trying to forget it.

He reached out to pull Anakin into his arms, stroking his back as Anakin cried against him in dazed, apparent relief that Obi-Wan had not shoved him away in disgust.

“You don’t hate me?” came the weak, trembling whisper.

“No,” Obi-Wan sighed wearily, attempting to find something to say through the cacophony of his own feelings. “I… I once killed for revenge and took pleasure in it, and it has haunted me ever since.”

Anakin pulled back, stunned. “You have?”

 _Yes, Padawan. Yes._ Obi-Wan thought to himself bitterly. _And I would do it again. Whether it was one or one hundred, murder is still murder. And Force help me, I enjoyed that look on his face and the feel of my saber catching as it carved through him._

He took a deep breath. “I think we should walk the rest of the way to the river. Find a place to sit and talk.” He let his hand fall away to light his own saber, and in the bright glow of it he reached over and wiped the wet lines of tears from Anakin’s cheeks. “You are not alone in this, Anakin. You are never alone.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> So now the question is... who is telling the truth about how Veris and Isten fell? One of them? Both of them? Neither of them?
> 
> And Anakin's sleepwalking is getting worse. And he confessed his worst secret to date so far to Obi-Wan. Is he doomed to Fall, like Isten says?
> 
> Thanks so much for reading and all of your support! <3
> 
> (Oh yes, and I did add another chapter to the final count. Something was supposed to happen this chapter that just didn't feel right to stuff in there.)


	7. Dawn

They walked in silence the rest of the way to the river, Obi-Wan stiffly leading the way with his saber and Anakin falling behind into the shadow the blue light cast behind his master, misery deepening with each step. There was only the sound of their boots on the path, the low hiss of Obi-Wan’s blade, and the growing swell of the river long before the path ended along its banks and the pitch-black line of trees around them opened up to reveal the midnight sky overhead.

Their bond writhed with shock and pain, an awful storm rising in both of them, and as they stopped on the gently sloping edge of the river Anakin found it cruel how perfect the night was: stars glittering overhead, silver-trimmed waves lazily meandering past below, and the scent of evergreen hanging in the balmy air.

 _Why? Why did I tell him?_ Anakin dropped to sit in the cool grass, scrubbing his hands over his face and through his hair as Obi-Wan turned off his saber and sat next to him, off to the left as he usually did when they meditated. _That was stupid and he’ll hate me. But I don’t want to be like Isten. I don’t._

A warm hand came to rest on his arm, and Anakin looked over, startled, to find Obi-Wan watching him sadly, the expression clear despite the darkness they sat in. “I remember the day they brought you back from surgery.” His shadow nodded at Anakin’s gloved fist curled in his lap. “You woke up, still drugged, and you looked down at your arm before I could say anything and… and you looked so relieved. And you said something in Huttese, so quietly I almost didn’t hear you.”

Anakin frowned, his own memory of the event hazy and scattershot. “What?”

“You said, ‘Kaliev an’. And then you fell back asleep.”

Blinking, Anakin felt a new flush of shame rise as Obi-Wan continued. “I didn’t understand. I knew what the phrase meant, or I thought I did.”

“‘The debt is paid’,” Anakin whispered to the ground, not daring to look up.

“Yes. I thought it was the painkiller. It didn’t make any sense.” Obi-Wan let his hand fall to Anakin’s knee. “But you were thinking of the raiders, weren’t you?”

There was a long pause, filled with the lull of the river passing by, before Anakin answered. “Yes. On Tatooine we say the old god of the desert is merciless. That any sin you commit Azul’ir will bring back to you, even if it takes him a lifetime to walk to your door and lay it at your feet. I thought… I thought my arm was my punishment for my anger, for killing them all in a rage. I thought that it was done. Or that’s what I hoped.”

Obi-Wan said nothing, listening, and Anakin swallowed and shook his head, still looking down at the dim shape of his hands in his lap. “But now… here…” He made a vague gesture back over his shoulder, toward the estate.

“Isten,” Obi-Wan finished quietly.

“What if that’s my punishment for what I did? Isten did the same thing on Tatooine. What if I’m meant to become that? To Fall? And… and to make you Fall too?”

He looked, up, voice trembling, to find Obi-Wan regarding him with a somber expression, his hair a soft grey in the moonlight. “Show me what happened the night you found your mother.”

“What?” Anakin froze, horrified at the idea. _No. No!_

“It is my burden to bear as much as yours,” Obi-Wan whispered, turning his hand over on Anakin’s knee to rest with the palm up. “I, I failed you, Anakin. As first your master and now your friend I have failed you in this. If the old god of the desert is to come, he will come for us both. Show me. Please.”

Anakin blinked at him, stunned, but Obi-Wan only waited, a motionless shadow next to him. This far from the house the strange haze around the Force was almost gone, and Anakin could sense with new guilt every jagged line of sorrow curling through the Force around Obi-Wan.

“It’s not your fault, Master. Please. I don’t want you to see.”

For the first time since he had spoken Anakin hoped Obi-Wan would get angry and shout, or hit him and leave. But he remained seated, unmoving, the back of his hand a solid weight against Anakin’s knee and his head canted to show he was still looking at Anakin.

“Master, please…”

Silence.

Fear, cold and bleak, wrapped around Anakin’s heart in a crushing grip as he realized Obi-Wan would not be deterred. _Please don’t hate me_ , he begged as he lowered his hand to Obi-Wan’s, their palms touching and fingers twining together. _Please._

 

* * *

 

The walk through the forest had been one of the longest of Obi-Wan’s life, Anakin’s words echoing in his mind over and over again as they had picked their way down the rough path, the trees they passed ghostly and distorted by the dazzling glow of his saber.

His former Padawan had sought revenge. Brutal, swift revenge against those that had hurt him.

For a moment Obi-Wan was young again, the soft grass of the bank he sat on gone, a Padawan braid brushing his shoulder as he argued with his own master. _“The boy is dangerous. They all sense it. Why can’t you?”_

And Qui-Gon’s response, the one he had taken to heart, the simple truth that had kept him going in the awful aftermath of Naboo and Qui-Gon’s death. _“His fate is uncertain.”_ Anakin was not doomed to the dark, Qui-Gon had believed. And Obi-Wan had taken up that idea, enshrined it in his master’s memory, and built on it with dogged hope and determination.

 _I meant to keep him in the light,_ Obi-Wan thought with a weary resignation as Anakin’s trembling hand came to rest in his own as it often did when they meditated together, two shadows linked by touch alongside the river. _And I thought I had._

 _No,_ he immediately countered as they closed their eyes, the lie obvious as soon as he thought it. _No, I knew there were problems. He has always been too anxious and angry to find his own balance. And it only got worse after Geonosis. After he became a knight._

_I just haven’t wanted to see it. You don’t want to see such things in your best friend._

The time Anakin had to be pulled off of a Separatist prisoner they were supposed to be negotiating with. The battle Obi-Wan had had to call out to Anakin through their bond to get him to stop from charging too far ahead into the lines of the enemy, lost in wanton and vicious swings of his blade through droid after droid.

The fear in Anakin’s eyes when Obi-Wan had awoken in the medbay after a gunship crash.

_I told myself it was stress, or exhaustion, or anything but what it was._

_The dark pacing around him, waiting for a chance._

_And now here we are_ , Obi-Wan numbly observed as he tried to steady his breathing and guided Anakin to do the same as best he could through the raw panic and shame that stained Anakin’s side of their bond. _How far has it gone? Is it too late?_

He pushed down his own fear for Anakin and opened his mind as best he could, willing himself to be the rock against Anakin’s storm. _I will not give up on you_ , he sent across the fragile golden link between them, and that was all he had time to think before the world around them fell away in an onslaught of emotions and blurry memories as their souls came together.

Rage, so much of it Obi-Wan could barely breathe, swirled around him thick and black, terrible in its depth but not completely unfamiliar. He allowed it to wash over him, and in this place without touch let it trail through his fingers as the scene came together.

It was every bit as horrifying as Obi-Wan had feared, despite the fragmented, confused nature of the memory. Striding through the shadows of a barely remembered cluster of huts, Anakin cut down the creatures one after another in sharp cuts of dazzling blue, never slowing, his grief and fury reducing him to madness that echoed painfully through Obi-Wan’s soul as he lived the memory himself.

_gone_

_shes gone and i’ll never see her again_

His entire world crumpled into wrath and azure lightning striking one misshapen form after another.

_never_

_you killed her youkilledmymother_

It wasn’t enough. It would never be enough.

_DIE_

_ALL OF YOU_

**_DIE_ **

Anakin was less human than animal, for a few terrible minutes driven by nothing more than pure, vile hate.

As they sat together in the real world while the raiders fell in their minds, tears glinted in Obi-Wan’s eyes not just at what Anakin had done, but at the realization Anakin had become like him. Had been like him for years now, no matter how deeply he had suppressed it.

_Anakin touched the dark. Like I did on Naboo. Murdered for revenge._

_And I didn’t know. I didn’t even know._

A flood of grief and shame overwhelmed him at his own failure, and before he could attempt to articulate his feelings across the bond Anakin suddenly cut it off, letting out a gasp and jerking his hand out of Obi-Wan’s.

“You hate me,” he whimpered, staring in horror at Obi-Wan, his face lost in shadow but anguished tone clear. “I knew you would.”

“No, Anakin,” Obi-Wan said, trying to remain as calm as he could through the harsh cacophony of his own emotions as he reached out to take Anakin’s hand once again. “I don’t.”

Anakin let him even as his voice lowered to a defeated whisper. “You do. I felt it.”

“Anakin…” Obi-Wan felt tired, more tired than he ever had in his life. “The only hatred I feel is for myself.”

“What? Why?”

“I never saw. I never understood. You...” he trailed off for a long while, staring up into the sky as he finally found words for something he had known for a long time. “You are precious to me, Anakin. More than my own life.”

Anakin went completely still, his anguish in the Force crystallizing into shock as Obi-Wan squeezed his hand without looking back at him.

“And I failed you in this. I knew, dammit,” Obi-Wan told the stars in a harsh whisper as tears welled up. “I knew what it was like to be overwhelmed by your own heart, by your own fear and anger. To slip into the dark. And I never told you. I never warned you of what might happen.”

He gave a pained, bitter chuckle as he wiped at his eyes and swallowed before forcing himself to continue. “Because I never wanted you to know I had failed at something so monumental.”

He knew Anakin was watching him now, his surprise bright and sharp in the Force. “Obi-Wan… even, even if that’s true, this is not your fault. What I did. What I am.”

“It is. And if you fall, I will be the one to do it. To pull you into the dark. That is what happened with Veris and Isten, Anakin.” Obi-Wan slid his hand out of Anakin’s, motioning angrily back toward the forest and the mansion hidden within it. “Veris pulled Isten down into the dark with him, Anakin. And I would rather die than do that to you.”

Anakin’s eyes widened, and his next words startled him with their anger. “No. He tricked you, Master. That bastard tricked you. That’s not what happened.”

“What?”

“Isten pulled Veris down with him. I know it. He told me,” Anakin said, humiliation at what Obi-Wan had seen inside his soul eagerly shifting to fury at a new target. “He knew Veris cared about him. And he used that, Master.”

“Anakin, Isten lied to you--”

“No, he didn’t. Listen, please. I need you to listen!” He took Obi-Wan by the shoulders, desperation in his anger. “Do you know why I hate Isten so much? Because it’s so easy to imagine being him, Master. He’s a monster, but I know I could be one too. I was one, on Tatooine. Just like him. He’s...”

Anakin’s head dropped and he found himself unable to look Obi-Wan in the eye as he finished in a hoarse whisper. “He’s everything I’m afraid of becoming!”

Obi-Wan felt Anakin’s fingers tighten on his shoulders, felt the harsh wave of despair roll through their bond to him, and in that moment the question of Isten’s lies fell away, leaving only a fierce sympathy for the man in front of him.

“Anakin,” he murmured, his own throat dry as he confessed aloud to something he had not dared to face before. “The dark is never as far away as I would like it to be. There have been times in my life it felt so close it felt like I was walking beside it.”

Anakin slowly looked up again in disbelief as Obi-Wan continued. “As I have said, I touched it once, when I went into a rage fighting the Sith Lord that killed my master. But I have not fallen to it. In all the years since that day I have fought it off. And I believe you can too. I know you can.”

“What if I can’t?” Anakin leaned closer, desperate eyes pale in the starlight. “If I become like him, like Isten, Master, promise you’ll stop me.”

Obi-Wan shook his head wordlessly as he brought his hand up to rest on Anakin’s cheek, tracing his finger down the scar that lay along his temple.

“Promise me.”

Obi-Wan closed his eyes, his words endlessly sad and gentle as they crossed into Anakin’s mind. _I would walk into the dark itself to bring you back out of it, Anakin, but I could never hurt you. Don’t you know that?_

Hopelessness met him, bleak and icy. _Even after what you saw? What I did?_

 _Even then, Padawan._ Obi-Wan stroked Anakin’s scar before sliding his hand back and through Anakin’s hair, softly pulling Anakin’s forehead against his. It was a gesture of comfort, the same way they sometimes meditated together after particularly horrific battles. _Your sins are mine,_ Obi-Wan’s heart told him without speaking _, and we will find a way to atone for them together when this war is over._

Anakin let out a choked sob, relief flooding through him. Fear and anger still writhed in obsidian haloes around him, violent emotions Obi-Wan could clearly sense now that Anakin was no longer trying to hide them from him, but under them was the brave, bright young man Obi-Wan could not imagine losing.

He pulled Anakin into a tight hug, tears in his own eyes, and let Anakin cry against him as the stars turned slowly overhead and the moons sank behind the ragged outline of the forest.

 

* * *

  

In the last hour before dawn Anakin awoke, cold and stiff, to find himself spread out on the dew-covered grass with his head against the firm warmth of Obi-Wan’s leg. He remembered exhaustion, both physical and emotional, creeping over the both of them as his tears had finally dried, and Obi-Wan murmuring to him to go ahead and rest while he would keep watch.

Anakin lay there as the world came back to him one detail at a time: the hard ground underneath him, the expanse of stars overhead, the first hint of grey lightening one edge of the night sky and clouds piling up against the other.

Obi-Wan’s fingers lay twined in his hair, hand a limp weight against the back of his neck and breathing soft and even.

_He’s asleep._

_He didn’t leave me here. He doesn’t hate me._

Looking out across the dim sprawl of the grass, over the lazy swirls of the river heard more than seen in the darkness, Anakin felt the stirrings of a new, fragile hope inside him. _Maybe I do have a chance to stay in the light. To try to atone for what I’ve done. Maybe I don’t have to be like Isten._

A rush of pure gratitude and love swelled inside Anakin as he sat up and turned to look at the silhouette of Obi-Wan, still dozing where he sat with his chin down and a lock of hair in his face. _I’m not alone. He’s with me._

There was still fear, deep and vast, and other tangled feelings that he had dealt with for as long as he could remember. But in that moment Anakin had an epiphany, pure and beautiful, as he smiled in wonder at Obi-Wan.

 _I love you_ , he realized in awe as he watched him sleep.

_Not just as a friend, or battle brother, or even “vod”, like the clones say about each other._

_I love you._

And then Anakin was closing his eyes, leaning forward in the silver-black of the night, one shadow slipping into the other as he pressed his lips to Obi-Wan’s and kissed him awake.

“Anakin?” Obi-Wan murmured against Anakin’s mouth, the word luscious and warm with sleep. Their bond flared with surprise at the kiss, a spark of heat as fragile as the stars beginning to disappear behind the vague shapes of clouds rolling in.

“Good morning,” Anakin whispered, giddy at the shy smile that grew on Obi-Wan’s face as the shock faded into awareness of what Anakin had done.

“Good morning,” Obi-Wan said, and it was his turn to lean into Anakin, to kiss him back with the same hesitant reverence Anakin had shown before sliding his hands up Anakin’s chest to gently push Anakin back.

Anakin let out a soft whimper but didn’t protest any further: this first moment of precious clarity, of understanding their affection was wanted and returned by the other, was as fragile as glass and they both instinctively moved apart to protect it.

They sat silently in the dark, Obi-Wan’s hand lingering on Anakin’s chest, until a distant roll of thunder sounded and a fresh gust of wind swirled between them.

“We should go back,” Obi-Wan said, but his hand remained where it was.

“Yeah.” Anakin put his own over Obi-Wan’s, not wanting to go and knowing Obi-Wan didn’t either.

They remained where they were, still and content, Anakin lost in the simple warmth of Obi-Wan’s palm through his thin undershirt and sensing Obi-Wan’s own quiet fascination with the beat of his heart. Their bond smoldered with a rush of new feelings too intense for words, entrancing and frightening at the same time, the Force around them growing so powerful it felt like the world itself hummed with it as the storm built, invisible in the night sky on the horizon.

 _Careful_. _We must be careful_ , Anakin thought distantly.

A new peal of thunder rolled through the forest, echoing low and deep in their bones, and they both turned to look in its direction, the delicate moment between them broken by a wave of cool air swirling in a loud rustle through the trees. The rising crest of the Force fell away in a scatter, a shiver passing through them both at its strength before the wave of unseen energy dissipated into the wind.

Obi-Wan pulled his hand back to run it through his hair, tousled by the wind, and cleared his throat. Anakin glanced away, glad the darkness hid the flush on his cheeks, and searched for something to say as another gust sent branches rattling warnings of rain on its way.

“How long do you think we have before it gets here?” he asked as they awkwardly stood up and brushed themselves off, not daring to speak aloud of what had just happened.

“Probably long enough to get back to the house,” Obi-Wan murmured, watching a few stars wink out in the distance as the line of inky clouds crept closer.

They walked back into the forest as quietly as they had come out, their souls twined more strongly together than they had ever been before, their bond laced with both the shared pain of Anakin’s confession and the subtle heat of their first kiss.

 

* * *

  

By the time they reached the edge of the gardens clouds had swept across the sky to hide the first rays of dawn and prolong the night a little longer, making Anakin’s search for the beacon harder than usual as vines and leaves danced all around him.

“Kriff a bantha,” Anakin muttered to himself as he at last sank to his knees in a small patch of white flowers growing in front of the bench he hoped the beacon was hidden underneath. The strange atmosphere of the estate had crawled under his skin the closer they had gotten, and he had found himself retracing his steps along the paths twice, suddenly unsure of which bench he was looking for.

_This is the right one, isn’t it? I guess? I wish I could turn on my saber so I could see better but that would draw too much attention._

He shoved aside the thorny spill of overgrown roses with his gloved metal hand and reached into the gap with his other one, fumbling blindly for the handle.

“Finally,” he said as his fingers closed around it and he pulled the bulky case halfway out with a grunt, the first wet drops of rain loud on the stones and dirt around him.

He and Obi-Wan had split up when they had reached the gardens to check on the beacon, Obi-Wan going down another path on the far side of the rambling grounds to pretend to look in a different location in case they were being watched.

 _Come on_ , Anakin thought with bitter anticipation, flipping the heavy catches and opening the lid. _Come on..._

The beacon was off.

Growling a long string of curses, Anakin smacked the keys to restart it and shut the lid with a thump as the rain started to come down harder, whispering in the sprawling beds around him. _They got to it, Master,_ he told Obi-Wan, hefting it up and hurrying toward the open arch of the back entrance to the house. _It’s off again._

Obi-Wan came jogging down the paths to meet him there, shaking his head as they hurried inside out of the growing storm and saying aloud what they had both been thinking. “I’m not surprised. They had the whole night after we left to look for it.”

Their boots crunched through broken glass and plaster as they veered off into a small side room without windows: Anakin’s experiments with the cleaning droids had yet to prove fruitful and it was something else for him to silently curse about as he lifted and set the case on a small side table with a disgusted sigh, waving at the dust that rose in a puff. “What now?”

“Did you reset it?”

“Yeah.”   

“We’ll have to move it again.”

Anger gnawing at him, Anakin crossed his arms and tried to stay calm as he glared at the unassuming case, to recapture the delicate peace he had felt earlier in the morning. “Or we could just move. Maybe down to the river, and just keep it with us?”

Obi-Wan looked at him, curious, and Anakin shrugged. “I like the river better than here. It feels better there. To me.”

“It does feel a little better there,” Obi-Wan admitted, “but we’d be exposed to the elements, and we don’t know what might be living in the woods. I’ve seen large tracks several times while out foraging. At least with Isten and Veris we know what we’re dealing with.”

“I’ve seen tracks too,” Anakin said reluctantly, not wanting to argue after the emotional upheaval of the night before. “It’s a pack of something, it looks like.”

Rain and wind drummed in loud hissing waves on the roof far overhead, and Obi-Wan paused, watching Anakin carefully before he pointed up into the dimness. “Well, we’re here until this clears up, at least.”

Anakin nodded, exhaustion creeping through him, and wearily picked the case back up. “I think I’m going to get some sleep. Where do you want to put this?”

“We’ll tuck it away somewhere on the way back up to our room. Those two can’t be everywhere at once.”

“I’m tired. Why don’t we just keep it in our room?” he said, hating the annoyed whine that suddenly came out.

“It’s the first place they’ll check whenever we leave,” Obi-Wan answered patiently despite the tired circles under his own eyes and the yawn he fought back. “Come on. There’s a small closet off of one of the rooms upstairs that might work until the weather improves.”

 

* * *

  

An hour later Anakin was fast asleep in the bed, the cooler air the rain had brought sending him under the covers to curl up in a tangle of them. Obi-Wan sat in the window across the room, his back to the lovely view of the gardens the second floor allowed them, the grey light outside catching in his hair and softening the serious expression he wore as he watched Anakin sleep.

He had lain down on the mattress next to the bed at the same time as Anakin, but despite how much the previous night had wrung out of him sleep would not come. After several attempts at meditation, Obi-Wan had finally gotten up with a long, defeated sigh to go sit in the window, trying to work through his thoughts and feelings and find out what was needling at him.  

It was not the shock of what Anakin had done on Tatooine: seeing it through their bond had stamped the memory into Obi-Wan’s soul as deeply as if he had been there himself. There was sadness and guilt, too much of it for him to think of clearly for now, but he knew that was not it.

It was not their kiss, something Obi-Wan still had trouble believing had happened. But the beautiful swell of the Force around them, potent and wild as they sat on the riverbank in the dark, had left a bright mark across his soul just as Anakin’s kiss had woken him with its heat.

 _I never knew he wanted me in that way, and yet it felt perfect when he kissed me. It felt, I don’t know, like we had been lovers our whole lives_ , Obi-Wan thought with a faint smile of disbelief and affection as he watched Anakin roll away in his sleep. _Who knows? Maybe there’s a chance we will be._

An unwelcome idea rose to wipe the smile away. _Like Veris and Isten?_

_Veris and Isten._

Obi-Wan froze where he sat, mind racing as he latched on to the thought despite the fear that arose, the sound of rain fading as he focused on it. _It’s something to do with them. Something from last night._

Anakin’s panicked face and terrified whisper in the dark came to mind, so different from the man sleeping peacefully across the room from him. “ _He’s everything I’m afraid of becoming.”_

_Just like Veris is everything I am afraid of becoming._

Obi-Wan frowned and reached for the datapad he was currently translating, the fourth in the set of seven neatly stacked on the floor by the window. Flicking back to one of the entries, heart beginning to pound, he stared at the screen for a long while.

_Is it possible?_

“Anakin,” he said, voice hoarse and lost in the rain before repeating his name again through their bond. _Anakin, I need you to wake up._

“Huh?” Anakin turned back over to face him, eyeing him sleepily as he brushed wavy locks of hair out of his face.

“Anakin, has Isten ever touched you? Or Veris?” Obi-Wan sat motionless, gaze intent on Anakin and fingers tight around the datapad. “I need to know.”

Blushing, Anakin sat up, scrubbing at his hair in an attempt to wake himself up for whatever had his master so concerned. “Third hell, Obi-Wan. No. Why?”

“Not once?”

“Not once,” Anakin grumbled in confusion, looking past him out the window and hesitantly adding, “I, uh, saw them with each other once, but no.” He thought about it, bleary-eyed, staring back down at the sheets. “No, neither of them has ever touched me.”

“Where did you see them together?”

“In the gardens.”

“I saw them too once,” Obi-Wan said, attempting to keep his usual calm tone of voice as he set the datapad on the windowsill and reached for his saber atop a set of drawers to snap it back onto his belt. “Here in the house. I need you to come with me.” _I can’t say anything without proof. I don’t want to get his hopes up if it’s not true._

“Now?” Anakin said, too puzzled to argue as he slid out of bed and tugged his tunic back on. “What’s going on?”

“I’ll explain when we get there.”

The walk downstairs was shorter than Obi-Wan remembered it, anticipation building into almost unbearable tension as they passed down the grand stairs and set off down the hallway he had crept through the last time he had been there.

Anakin caught him by the shoulder halfway down it, the two of them coming to a stop under lofty windows long broken out, and Obi-Wan glanced back with a frustrated whisper. “What is it, Anakin?”

“Do you know where they are? Are we going to see them? That’s not a good idea, Master,” Anakin muttered, never taking his eyes off the open doors up ahead.

“Just trust me, Anakin. Please.”

Anakin frowned but let him go, hand dropping to rest on his saber as they continued down the hall.

The open doorway into Veris and Isten’s room lay just ahead now, near the end of the long corridor, and Obi-Wan did not allow himself to stop or even slow, striding inside as Anakin gave a hissed warning of caution behind him.

The sound of Obi-Wan’s boots on the wooden floor echoed loudly and then faded away into silence as he came to a stunned halt in the middle of the room, looking down at the footprints he had left in the dust and then back up again wide-eyed.

The once-luxurious bed in the corner lay empty and untouched save a thick layer of dust, crowned with cobwebs that hung in lacy drifts from the windows. An overturned chair lay half-rotted in the corner, its elaborate design long faded.

The room had not been used in decades.

 _They’re not real_ , Obi-Wan whispered across their bond, unable to speak. _Veris and Isten aren’t real._

_They’re illusions._

Anakin stalked in behind him, saber unlit but in hand as he took in the dilapidated wreck of a room. “What? What are you talking about?”

“We created them, Anakin. Together.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> So what did you think? I hope you liked it! 
> 
> And hats off to several of you who called Veris and Isten! :D 
> 
> The next update will be in two weeks, maybe a little less, and I'll catch up on comments as usual over the next couple of days. Thank y'all so much for reading and your support, as always! <3


	8. A Stark Symphony

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This chapter has some NSFW in it, as a heads up!

“That’s- that’s impossible,” Anakin stammered in the shadows of the musty bedroom. “They’re not real?”

“I saw them here. Or thought I did,” Obi-Wan said in muted awe, staring at the dust covering the bed.

“No one has been here in years.”

“I know.”

Obi-Wan didn’t argue when Anakin turned and stalked through the back of the house toward the gardens and straight out into the rain, only following in a daze behind him as he tried in vain to comprehend the implications of what this realization meant.

After all, it had taken seeing with his own eyes to believe it himself, and he came to a stop in the arched doorway that led back out into the gardens, watching Anakin’s hair darken as he disappeared down one of the paths stretching out under the grey sky.

A few minutes later Anakin drifted back out of the green to the bottom of the steps, the usual color gone from his tanned face as he looked up in bewilderment at Obi-Wan standing above him in the murky gloom of the house. “I don’t understand. I saw them there.” Drops of water hung from the curls of his hair, falling to sink into the wet linen of his tunic clinging to his shoulders as he shook his head. “How?”

“I don’t know. Come inside,” Obi-Wan murmured, holding his hand out, and Anakin climbed the steps with a shiver as another gust of wind rustled waves through the flowers and bushes around them.

“We made them?”

“I think we did. With, for lack of a better word, help.” Obi-Wan placed his hand on the small of Anakin’s back in an attempt to ground both of them, leading the two of them back upstairs to their room in stunned silence.

When Anakin had stripped out of his wet tunic and boots, huddling shirtless in his pants under the cover on the bed as the temperature continued to drop outside, Obi-Wan looked up from the datapad he had gotten back out and was pacing back and forth across the room with. “Remember the odd ramblings I told you about in these journals? What I thought was just spice-fueled fantasies?”

“Yeah.”

“This place, this area, is powerful in the Force to begin with.”

Anakin nodded, loathing how the background noise of the house had not gone away even when he had stood in front of the rambling vines covering the pergola he thought he had seen the two Sith in, the delicate leaves and blooms sprawling unbroken over what had once been a bench.

“We use the Force all the time. We don’t hallucinate things,” Anakin said with more anger than he meant to.

“I know. There must be a legitimate Force artifact in the owner’s collection here in the house. Possibly a Sith one. Whatever it is, it seems to have amplified the area’s natural well of the Force to the point even those with only a slight bit of Force-sensitivity were able to tap into the artifact and awaken it.”

Obi-Wan took another datapad from the stack, drumming his pale finger along the top to page through it as he sat down atop the covers next to Anakin. “This, if it actually happened and is not some Telladorian metaphor I am not aware of, is a good example of how the artifact works. ‘The Kaleans, dear friends of mine, a husband and wife of many... long and passionate years under the sun of the homeland, sat in the... even brighter shining light of my beloved with me and let their minds go... like beautiful songs into a strong wind.”

“You weren’t kidding about the wordiness,” Anakin offered with a grim smile, drawing the covers tighter around himself.

“You have no idea.” Obi-Wan frowned in concentration at the datapad. “While the owner was definitely Force-sensitive and apparently his wife as well, some of the others in their group seemed to be jealous because the Kaleans had the most concrete ‘visions’, suggesting they were at least slightly Force-sensitive. ‘And suddenly a serpent wound its way… around… no, I believe that’s from… from the heart of my dear one, but it was the fading pastels of a sunset and as it danced away on delicate coils out into the forest the three of us laughed in amazement... and reached for it but our hands... slipped, no… passed… passed right through it. Over our dinner, upon the group’s fascinated discussion of the strange apparition... the Kaleans admitted… the man had a fear of being bitten… and the wife confessed her happiest memory was of the sunset the night they had married.’”

Anakin frowned as Obi-Wan waved his hand. “There are at least three examples I can think of that follow the same pattern in what I have translated so far: the hallucinations brought on by whatever artifact this is are a mix of desire, or love, and the fears of one person, or in the case of the couple, a strongly bonded pair.”

He paged through the fourth datapad as Anakin warily looked at the lines of writing he couldn’t read and shook his head in reluctant amazement. “In another case, the owner wrote of seeing a pile of beautiful jewels strewn over the tiles in a hallway and reaching for them only to have them all split open and poison leak from the cracks. The jewels had reminded him of a necklace his first love used to wear. And the poison became a lifelong fear after a jealous former lover killed that same girl with it at a fancy dinner the owner attended. Where is it… the owner called this nasty little Force trick ‘a stark symphony... almost too terrible to behold: fear and desire... as one.’”

“Isten is my fear of Falling,” Anakin said almost too quietly to be heard over the rain and wind outside. “And taking you with me.”

“And Veris is mine, of the same,” Obi-Wan replied in the same somber tone as they both stared out into the overcast sky.

An uncomfortable silence descended as they had the same thought at the same time across the bond: _So then what part of them was our desires?_

From within the warm depths of the covers Anakin felt heat creep up and across his face as Obi-Wan cleared his throat and looked back down at the datapad, both of them remembering what they had seen the Sith do and understanding for the first time what it might mean.

“Perhaps… perhaps the desire was simply that we, we are attracted to each other.” Obi-Wan finally offered to the bulky screen in his lap. “It’s not something we had really thought about before. Consciously.”

“Yeah,” Anakin said with the same shaky hope he could feel from Obi-Wan, neither willing to explore in any more detail the darker aspects that had been hinted at in their twins’ relationship. “I wish the house felt different. I mean, even though we know what they were now, it still feels the same. Should it?”

“Whatever artifact they brought with them must be here to this day and is feeding off of our strength in the Force. But I don’t want to try to find out where it is given how blind we are in the Force here. It could be anything at all-- a talisman, a stone, a piece of jewelry-- and I still feel that, if it is a Sith artifact, opening our minds to it to identify it in a place like this could be disastrous.”

“Yeah, no kidding.”

“But now, at least,” Obi-Wan sighed, setting the datapad aside, “we know the Sith are not real. They pose no threat beyond how unsettling they are.”

Anakin nodded, relieved a bit at that idea. “It’s just us here, then.”

“Yes, and...” Obi-Wan trailed off as ice crawled down his spine. “If it’s just us, who is turning off the beacon?”

 

* * *

 

The day passed in anxious frustration as Obi-Wan and Anakin went through every room in the house in a tense and ultimately fruitless search with sabers lit, leaving out only rooms buried in collapses of the roof in some spots and the set of locked doors outside of the library that had such heavy dust over their control panels it was clear no one was going in and out of them even if they could have somehow unlocked them.

One of the only highlights of the tedious exercise was the discovery of various supplies they dragged back to their room and a huge closet with heavier clothing still hanging in sealed bags, including a variety of cloaks Anakin and Obi-Wan happily took two of as the rain continued and the temperature dropped to a chilly enough temperature they agreed to share the bed for heat rather than have one of them on the floor.

The antique fireplaces of the house were just for show, it had turned out, not a working chimney to be found in the place, and they had both decided it was too risky trying to start a fire indoors.

That night they were too sore and exhausted from shoving their way through debris and half-jammed doors to do anything more than silently eat cold rations by candlelight and settle into bed, Obi-Wan’s back against Anakin’s chest and the comforting weight of Anakin’s gloved metal arm slung over his waist as they huddled together under the covers with the scent of the candle Obi-Wan had blown out hanging sharp in the air.

It was an old battle habit to sleep like this out in the field, learned from their clones and nothing new to either of them at this point, and as the endless rain droned on outside with Obi-Wan’s warmth soothing against him, Anakin briefly wondered before falling asleep if all of his peaceful, tranquil moments with Obi-Wan had come about because of war.

 

* * *

 

Long after Anakin slipped into sleep, his body relaxing bonelessly against Obi-Wan’s, Obi-Wan lay awake in the darkness, soothing both his and Anakin’s muscles with a light meditation and mind troubled by what they had found, or rather the lack of what they had found.

They were alone in the house.

There was no sign of footprints anywhere in the vast spreads of broken glass in many of the halls other than the ones they left as they passed, no dust disturbed anywhere they had not been themselves and no sign of any living thing in the Force beyond small flickers of vermin and forest creatures when they had worked together to try to reach through the strange haze of it that permeated the estate. There were signs of damage, perhaps animals finding their way inside and destroying some rooms long ago, but that was it.

 _What am I missing?_ Obi-Wan asked himself, willing his annoyance to remain mired in his meditation behind his shields and not wake Anakin any further when he felt him stir behind him. _What am I not seeing?_

The covers fell off him in a rush, pulled by Anakin sitting up, and Obi-Wan rolled over in surprise and annoyance at the sudden wave of cold air to find Anakin staring off blankly into the distance. “Anakin?” he asked, but Anakin said nothing and stood, walking toward the door with slow, clumsy steps.

_Sleepwalking again._

Obi-Wan sighed and got up himself, wrapping one of the cloaks they had found around himself and following behind Anakin as he made his way out into the hall. _I can’t blame him. This whole situation has been incredibly stressful._

Waking him up suddenly was not a good idea and could lead to an instinctive, wild swing on Anakin’s part, Obi-Wan had learned long ago. He took careful steps across the frigid floorboards, barefoot but not wanting to let Anakin out of his sight long enough to put his boots on.

The house was still save the drumming of the rain on the roof and the faint rustle of trees swaying to the wind out in the forest, and Obi-Wan tensed when Anakin faded into nothing more than a shadow ahead of him as they moved further into the blackness of the mansion. _We are alone here. There is nothing to fear_ , he told himself, but his gut twisted in his stomach as Anakin turned up ahead of him down a windowless side hall.

 _Stay with him_ , Obi-Wan chided himself, walking onward with his hand against the wall to tell him when to turn into the hall and pausing when it was too dark to even make out where he was going.

The yawning shadows of three open doors set into one wall loomed at the end of the corridor, velvet shapes against coal, and he wondered why it felt so familiar when he heard a harsh beep from the closest room.

_The beacon._

_This is where we hid the beacon. In a closet in that room._

Hurrying ahead, a pit forming in his stomach, Obi-Wan squinted into the gloom and saw Anakin silhouetted by graceful windows and kneeling by a smooth, perfectly rectangular silhouette: the hard case dragged from the closet they had put it in.

Unaware of Obi-Wan, Anakin clumsily shut the lid and shoved it back out of sight before standing up on unsteady feet, turning back in the direction of the door.   

Too shocked to say anything, trying to process what he had just seen and wondering if he was dreaming somehow, Obi-Wan could only stand aside and follow Anakin back out, but instead of going back to their room Anakin took another shaky turn and went toward the grand sweep of stairs that led down to the first floor. 

Hands beginning to shake, Anakin paused and reached out to grab the railing with his gloved hand, fingers twining slowly around the wood and stopping at the top of the stairs as if fighting a tide pulling him onward.

“No…” Anakin mumbled, once and then again, face lost in shadow but a dull panic rising through their bond to Obi-Wan.

“Anakin,” he said, cringing at how loud the whispered word sounded in the dim, empty vastness of the grand hall.

“No,” Anakin repeated, mechno-hand so tight on the rail Obi-Wan heard it creak.

 _Anakin_ , Obi-Wan tried again, moving closer but staying out of arm’s reach, forcing down his own fear and confusion to let a single, bright spark of reassurance pass between them. _Wake up, Anakin. I’m right here. You’re safe._

Anakin’s eyes shot open and the high ceiling echoed the violent crack of wood as his hand crunched into the delicately carved railing.

Startled at the noise, Anakin gave a strangled cry and shoved back away from the stairs and Obi-Wan to slam into the wall behind him.

 _It’s me! It’s me!_ Obi-Wan said, lifting his hands and realizing Anakin couldn’t see him as he cringed against the cracked plaster. _It’s Obi-Wan. It’s me, Anakin. It’s me, Padawan._

 _Master?_ Anakin whimpered back, too distraught for any coherent thought beyond that.

Obi-Wan approached him and held out a hand, letting Anakin take it first before pulling him slowly into a cautious hug. “I’m right here, Anakin. You’re safe.”

Anakin collapsed against him, shivering from something far worse than the cool air of the hall. “I had the strangest dream. I can’t… I don’t know how to describe it. It’s...”

“Shh,” Obi-Wan said, stroking his back, struggling to find the right words to explain to Anakin what he had just seen him do. _It was never the Sith trying to keep us here. It was you._

Bewildered, more afraid for Anakin than upset with him, Obi-Wan felt a guilty relief when Anakin spoke up first. “I think… I think I’m the one turning the beacon off.”

“You are,” Obi-Wan said quietly, pulling back to lay his hand on Anakin’s cheek in an attempt to soothe himself as much as Anakin. “I saw you do it just now. I think… I think we should go back to the room and talk.”

 

* * *

 

Anakin walked back through the unlit hallways to their room in a daze ahead of Obi-Wan, rubbing his arms to keep warm and filled with a new misery at the thought that after all of the doubt and fear about the Sith, he had been the one to keep them trapped here in this strange place.

_What is wrong with me?_

Horror bloomed and spread in a thick, ugly cloud across his mind. _What if it isn’t the house? Or this artifact that makes people see things? What if all of the unsettling feelings I thought this place was giving me was just… me? And the artifact made me sense it? More aware of it? I mean, if it amplifies the Force..._

The nightmare he had woken up out of in a panic lurched back into view in his mind: there had been the beacon lying on the floor in front of him, and then he had been standing alone in front of a door in the dark.

_Something was scratching at it from the other side, slowly but getting louder and angrier, the door starting to shake in its frame._

_I wanted to run but I couldn’t. And somehow, over the noise of the thing on the other side of the door, I heard a whisper in my ear. It was so quiet I couldn’t tell if it was a man or a woman. ‘Welcome home, Anakin.’_

_And then I woke up in the hall with Obi-Wan._

Anakin shuddered at the memory of the voice as Obi-Wan led him over to the bed and wrapped the covers around him as he sat down, Obi-Wan buried in the folds of his own borrowed cloak as he sat next to him. _Is that voice actually me? Is that, oh Force please no, is that me on the other side of that door? Like I was on Tatooine?_

And then Obi-Wan was reaching for his hands, sending a wordless swell of concern through to Anakin as their fingers twined together in Anakin’s lap: a suggestion they meditate together until they were both calmer.

_This entire time, all of the evil we thought we felt here, the dark… is just me?_

_Anakin_ , Obi-Wan called through the bond, worry obvious as Anakin’s tangle of emotions flooded his mind. _Anakin, please._

“I’m sorry,” he said, taking a deep breath to try to steady himself. The noise of the house hissed away inside his mind, as steady and unchanging as the rain out in the gardens. He wanted to get up and pace, or go run a klick, or shout or spar or do something, anything other than sit and feel the awful, invisible weight pressing down on his mind.

“Anakin,” Obi-Wan said after a moment, warm hands clasped around his and voice soothing and low despite the edge of anxiety along his own halo in the Force, “I know the war is hard. I know it better than most. I am not angry or upset you have been turning the beacon off but I don’t understand why you would, even subconsciously. You have never shied away from a fight.”

“I don’t either,” Anakin said to Obi-Wan’s hands, pale grey in the gloom, shame bitter in his voice. “I don’t want to leave Ahsoka and Rex and our men without us. I don’t understand why I would do it either.”

“Are you scared? It’s all right to be scared. Everyone is in a war, at one point or another.”

The voice from the dream drifted through his mind, and Anakin swallowed a fresh twinge of fear. “I don’t think I’m scared of the war. I think… I think I’m scared of myself.”

“Of becoming like Isten?”

“Yeah. I don’t know how to explain it,” he gestured, pulling his hand free to wave it around the house in frustration. “I thought it was the house, or whatever artifact is here, wherever it is, but maybe it’s just me. Maybe all of this has just been me reflected through it.”

“Anakin.” Obi-Wan shook his head. “I know you feel the aura of this place more strongly than I do, but the hint of strangeness even I can sense does not come from you. I have known you, fought by your side, used the Force with you for a very long time.”

Obi-Wan reached over to squeeze Anakin’s shoulder, blue-grey eyes silver in the dim light as they instinctively settled into a light meditation together, their hearts slowly falling into a steady rhythm and silence between them for a long while.

“It is not you hanging over this house,” Obi-Wan said at last, when the worst of their emotions had smoothed out enough weariness overcame them. “Veris and Isten showed us that: they came from both of us, not just you. Whatever is here has unsettled us both, and as soon as the rain clears up perhaps, as we have discussed, it would be good to move away from the estate while we wait for rescue and take our chances in the woods.”

“The animals… the ones we’ve seen tracks from...” Anakin offered half-heartedly, not wanting to appear too eager but more than ready to leave that night.

“We’ll see. But for now we both need to rest. I’ll reset and hide the beacon while you stay here, all right? If you don’t see where I put it you can’t turn it off,” Obi-Wan said gently, no reproach in his voice, and Anakin’s chest tightened at how much care Obi-Wan was taking to not upset him further.

 _I don’t deserve you_ , he thought gratefully as Obi-Wan left, painted blue in the glow of his saber as he disappeared off down the hall.

When Obi-Wan returned a little while later, neither man spoke as he powered down his saber and set it on the table next to the bed, the faint scent of ozone comforting to both of them, and crawled back under the covers to lie down once again in the crook of Anakin’s arm.

“Thank you,” Anakin whispered against the chill nestled in Obi-Wan’s hair from his walk through the house, his lips tasting the cold as they brushed the back of Obi-Wan’s neck. “I’m sorry.”

“Nothing to be sorry for,” Obi-Wan murmured back, exhausted and patting the gloved hand hanging over his waist as they both drifted toward sleep. “Unless you pull these damned covers off again.”

Anakin snickered and Obi-Wan chuckled, happy to hear the tired relief in his voice, the sound bright and pure in the pitch-black of the bedroom. “Good night, Anakin.”

“Good night, Obi-Wan.”

 

* * *

 

Anakin was falling asleep, the linen of his undershirt soft against his chest and the warmth of Obi-Wan’s back firm against him, and the next thing he knew he was standing in the middle of a party with the high neck of a formal coat of some kind close against his throat.

 _Where am I?_ he wondered, looking around in awe. The elegant detailing along the walls of the long chamber and delicate spun glass lights suggested he was in the mansion, but he barely recognized it with the lights on and more than a dozen people in strange fashions laughing and dancing to bright music as bulky, outdated serving droids passed between them.

There were no windows but Anakin was positive if there were they should be broken.

_This whole room should be dark and ruined._

_Shouldn’t it?_

Anakin shook his head, smoothing down the front of the coat and taking a glass of what looked to be Navakese blush wine from one of the droids whirring slowly past him. _Ruined? That doesn’t make any sense. Why would we want to ruin this beautiful place?_

He smiled at one of the couples as they broke away from the group and disappeared out one of the doors past him, the woman’s perfume lingering behind. _This place is a paradise. Our paradise._

Another pair approached him, a handsome man and beautiful woman draped in silks and jewels: they took his hand and guided him along behind them out the same door with the lazy ease of those deep in the throes of spice. “Come play,” the woman giggled in his ear as her husband grinned at him, their knowing smiles leaving no doubt as to what she meant. “Come and play.”

Anakin awoke, breathless, aware of too many things at once: the fact it was night outside, the harsh static of the house rushing back into his head, the warm covers, how close to him Obi-Wan was.

How hard Anakin was getting and how pitifully thin the fabric of his pants seemed.

Blushing, he tried to pull his arm back to sit up but Obi-Wan’s was wrapped around it and he reflexively pulled Anakin back against him in his sleep, bringing a muffled whine of frustration from Anakin as he shifted and Anakin’s erection pressed harder against him.

Anakin’s breath caught in his throat with equal parts arousal and mortification as Obi-Wan went perfectly still. “Anakin?” he finally said into the quiet dark of the room, tone unreadable.

“Yeah,” he muttered against Obi-Wan’s shoulder, not trusting himself to say anything more and trying his best not to think about the firm heat of Obi-Wan’s body against his. The dream had already faded to a blur of images and pleasant feelings, but desire rushed heavy and thick through his blood and when Obi-Wan turned over toward him, features lost in the night, he did not get up or push himself away.

Obi-Wan’s own breathing was short and shallow, his expression hidden but the sound of him moving against the sheets loud to Anakin’s ears as Obi-Wan hesitantly brought his hand across the space between them to trace up the lines of Anakin’s tunic to his jaw.

“Did you like it? Kissing me?” Anakin managed, heart pounding. Just the touch of Obi-Wan’s hand on his mouth was cutting into the noise that had already swarmed back into Anakin’s mind, and he desperately wanted more.

“Yes,” came the answer, so soft and fragile it was almost inaudible.

“Do it again. Please. I need you. Please.”

Obi-Wan hesitated for a moment, and Anakin was about to beg when Obi-Wan slid his arms around him and pulled him into a tender kiss. Two shadows casting heat without light, they sank into each other wordlessly, Anakin letting out a weak cry of pleasure as Obi-Wan rolled atop him.

In the hidden shelter of the room in a house they both now knew themselves to be alone in, almost hidden completely beneath the covers, they kissed each other for awhile with lazy, luscious curiosity, hands trailing across and under linen to shrug their tunics off, ghosting over lithe muscle and faint scars.

Obi-Wan cupped Anakin’s jaw in his hand and turned it to lovingly to the side, lowering his head to lick and leave teasing bites along Anakin's throat as Anakin’s hands tightened on his back.

Anakin responded by turning his head and sucking the tips of Obi-Wan’s fingers as he did, drawing a heady, harsh gasp of approval against the marks Obi-Wan had just left on him.

Neither spoke in the growing tides of the Force swirling around them, afraid to admit what they were doing out loud, not wanting it to end, and when Obi-Wan’s hands wandered down Anakin’s flat stomach into his pants, Anakin only moaned and shifted his hips up into Obi-Wan’s palm. _Please,_ his body begged as he grabbed at the sheets, erect cock thick and hot in Obi-Wan’s hand, and Obi-Wan gave him a shadow of a smile in the dark as he tugged on Anakin’s pants, Anakin eagerly helping him to pull them off before settling back in for more kisses that were as deep and slow as the way Obi-Wan stroked him.

Anakin couldn’t see what was happening: he could only feel, and the careful, confident way Obi-Wan’s fingers worked the stiffness of him was almost maddening.

He tried to roll over, but as soon as his hips began to shift Obi-Wan pressed them back down against the bed with his free hand, shaking his head. _Not tonight_ , the gesture said. _Not yet._

Obi-Wan did not want to rush him, and Anakin knew it was too dangerous to think about it too much because if he did the fragile mood would be broken, and so he tried to relax back into the bed, to trust Obi-Wan, and was rewarded with Obi-Wan’s other hand lifting up to Anakin’s mouth to play with his lips.

 _Is that what he wants me to do?_ Anakin thought with new excitement as Obi-Wan fondled him, and before he could stop himself the image of Isten kneeling before Veris came back to him, made especially clear in the strange waves of the Force dancing unseen higher and higher around them.

Lost in desire, Anakin welcomed it as he had in his furtive trips to the woods, closing his soft mouth around Obi-Wan’s fingers as Obi-Wan began to push them in and out, giving his own sighs of approval at Anakin’s tongue twining aimlessly around them.

He dug his fingers into the mattress as Obi-Wan’s hand wrapped tighter around his cock, pulling harder now, and before Anakin understood what he was doing he had let the image of Veris and Isten slip across the bond to Obi-Wan.

Obi-Wan paused for only a moment, Anakin’s heart stopping, and then Obi-Wan leaned down to kiss him as hard as he could while he stroked him, free hand moving to tangle in the curls at the base of Anakin’s neck. Another image floated back to Anakin amid the searing ecstasy building inside him, a hazy recollection of seeing Veris’s hips rocking against Isten’s as they lay together in the bed in the ruined room Obi-Wan had taken him to the day before.

The two Sith were not real, and now that they understood that, there was a powerful, forbidden eroticism in those visions, the ability to say in the secret, darkest hours of the night what neither man might ever feel comfortable putting into words.

Obi-Wan cautiously twisted his hand against the back of Anakin’s neck, tugging at his hair, and Anakin whimpered happily as his mind went beautifully, perfectly blank for a moment. He strained his hips upward into Obi-Wan’s hand, unable to take anymore, and gave a stuttered gasp as he came in a white spray across his own stomach while Obi-Wan continued to tug and pull until Anakin was left writhing and incoherent underneath him.

Both of them panting hard, Anakin in mindless bliss and Obi-Wan in excitement at the sight of Anakin sprawled in shadow beneath him, they said nothing as Anakin tried to catch his breath. He gave Obi-Wan a smile once he had, flushed face hot as he slid off the bed onto his knees on the mattress lying next to it.

The cold air of the room no longer felt like it: his entire body was smoldering and the sticky line dribbling down his stomach an entrancing reminder of what had just happened, sweetly bitter in scent and making him feel beautifully filthy in a way Anakin had never experienced with any of his other lovers.

When Obi-Wan tugged his pants off and shifted over to sit on the edge of the bed, Anakin happily rose up on his knees to playfully slip his hands up along Obi-Wan’s pale thighs and lower his head down between them.

Anakin’s only experience with this particular act had been innocent exploration with a friend over a year before. He had no way of knowing how much the gentle way he licked and kissed teased Obi-Wan until Obi-Wan once again took him by the hair, a little more roughly this time with Anakin’s eager approval, and began to show him what to do, guiding his lips and his fingers around the hard shaft pressing deeper and deeper into Anakin’s mouth.

Anakin licked and sucked, straining to take as much as he could even though it threatened to choke him, only a wanton lust at the thought of it and the bruises sharp and raw along his throat. _Yes, yes, more, please, I want you to mark me i want to be yours pleasemakemeyours…_

_...Master._

The Force shuddered around them, almost palpable.

 _I want to be yours, Master,_ he begged without words across the bond, eyes closed and Obi-Wan now thrusting in and out of his mouth with both hands lost in Anakin’s hair _._ The jolt of guilty pleasure at the new meaning for the old title bloomed hot and white between them, Obi-Wan grunting a half-strangled curse as he shuddered against Anakin, buried so deep Anakin almost gagged.

Bitter salt spread down Anakin’s throat, warm and sticky, and he moaned eagerly and gave one last loving suck and swipe of his tongue along Obi-Wan’s cock before pulling back enough to let it drop wet and heavy against the bed, swallowing and resting his head on Obi-Wan’s thigh to gasp for air.

Obi-Wan slid off the bed himself, landing heavily on the mattress, and pulled Anakin into a tight embrace, too lost in euphoria to do anything but pull Anakin close to him as they lay together in the dark, a tangle of bodies and spent heat.

The thunderhead of the Force that had seemed to pile up around them began to dissipate, fading in drafts off into the house, and somewhere off in the forest faint howls rose up ghostly and strange in the night.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> First of all, have y'all seen this amazing art of [Veris and Isten by jerseytigermoth](http://jerseytigermoth.tumblr.com/post/163984993962/yoohoo-writegowrite-well-i-did-promise-i-would) over on Tumblr? You should! I love it so much! <3 THANK YOU, JERSEYTIGERMOTH!
> 
> Drooling over that art aside, thank y'all so much for reading and your support! Work ate me alive for a solid week but I'm back, hopefully back on the two week schedule if things go well.
> 
> So what did you think? Not only were Veris and Isten illusions, Anakin has been the one behind the beacon after all! 
> 
> And are Anakin and Obi-Wan going to actually be well-adjusted about this new step in their relationship or will there be some major awkwardness and guilt next chapter?


	9. Freedom

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This chapter is a little shorter than usual but I felt it left off at the right place. Hope you like it!

Darkness.

There was a long, endless darkness, strange and confused, as he drifted like a shadow tugged along by an owner he couldn’t see. Or was it a dream?

_Am I sleepwalking?_

The blackness broke into a silver dawn of warmth and the scatter of distant rain.

He sat up, dazed, blinking into the hazy light of an overcast morning spilling around him before he collapsed weakly back to the floor.

“The library?” he whispered to the rug he was sprawled out on, the words rasping against the vast ceiling overhead. Everything was so vivid it almost hurt: the weight of his mechno-arm at his side as he pushed himself to his feet, the dusty smell of old books hanging in the air as he stumbled and tried to find his balance, the pull of the linen collar of his tunic against his throat.

Something was different about the spacious room, about the house beyond it. The tidal currents of the Force still washed over him, but now they brought a heady pleasure under the danger, frightening and rich and lovely like the thrill that comes from riding out a vast storm in a small boat. _Come on, Anakin, think_ , he told himself as he wandered over to touch the rows of datapads and books lining the shelves, entranced by the slick ice of metal and rough grit of leather his fingers passed over.

He kept walking, feeling drunk on the Force, laughing to himself in delight as he tried to name the intense emotions rising up inside him. His fingers briefly trailed over the subtle waves of flowers carved into the relief mounted in the center of the room, past the hems of its elegant, hooded figure looking out over the library and the stone cool against his palm.

_I feel strong. I feel… free._

Looking up in fascination at the windows and the gauzy grey sky outside as he wandered along the shelves lining the wall, he stopped when his hand slipped across something perfectly smooth.

He glanced back to see he had reached a small, gilded mirror mounted at eye level. When he let his hand fall away it revealed his reflection looking back at him with Anakin’s curls tucked at the base of his neck and Anakin’s scar wandering down one temple. It was him.

Except for the golden eyes.

Sith eyes.

“What the…” He jerked back, and the reflection did the same, disappearing out of the frame of the mirror.

The silence in the library loomed heavy and ominous now as he regarded the mirror with new unease, and after a moment he leaned in with horror, and an inexplicable eagerness, to find his bizarre reflection doing the same. _That is not me. It can’t be me!_ “No… no… what is this?”

 _Am I dreaming?_ He looked down at himself and realized he was in all black, tunics and tabards coal-dark even in the morning light, the weight of it crashing into his awareness with undeniable clarity: the clothing, the belt, even the familiar pull of a saber on his hip.

Whirling in a horrified search for another mirror, he settled on an old silver vase set on a narrow display table on the other side of the library. Stalking over and wiping away the dust, he silently begged for it to show something different as he bent down over it, unable to understand why he still felt giddy for all of his fear.

His reflection jumped in broken angles across the lines of the vase, distorted and eerie.

He didn’t care about the reflection. Just the colors.

And in the middle of the delicate vase, his eyes glittered like a desert sunset against the metal.

_No, no..._

Stepping back, he clenched his fists and was about to let out a cry of terror when it abruptly died away in a swell of awed recognition.

He understood.

The bittersweet energy coursing through him. The thrill deep in his bones at the uneasy atmosphere of the house. He knew what that was. _The dark._

The dark was singing to him.

And it was beautiful.

Because he belonged to it, he realized with astonishment.

_Isten._

_I’m… I’m Isten._

He felt the truth of the words as soon as they came to him, could feel the vicious joy of the dark all around as clearly as he could sense the two shimmering points of light somewhere overhead on the second floor.

Normally such brightness would have been repulsive, he somehow knew as he reached out with his mind, but these two only brought a smile to his face as he placed their distinct halos in the Force. They were precious, after all, even if they were of the light.

_Anakin and Obi-Wan._

A pair, perfectly matched.

Just like him and his master.

_Isten and Veris._

Isten retreated, drawing his consciousness back to the library, searching for the hypnotizing black hole of his own master’s presence.

Those of the light would not be able to sense him and his master, the pair of them dark in a place awash in it, but for him Veris smoldered in the Force, unmistakable through their newborn bond.

_Master… wake up, Master._

A low groan came from a long sofa behind where Isten had inexplicably found himself sprawled on the ground a few minutes before, and he strode over to find his beloved master yawning and sitting up to run a hand through his auburn hair with the same puzzled amazement. “Anakin?”

“We’re… alive, Master.” He took in the other man’s black clothing and predatory yellow gaze with a laugh as he swung a leg up and shifted to straddle him. “We’re free.”

“Isten,” came the adoring whisper.

“Veris,” he answered with a lusty grin as his master’s hands ran down the front of his neatly arranged tunics.

Veris closed his eyes with an approving groan as Isten shifted against him. “How?”

“I don’t know,” Isten murmured, trailing his fingers through Veris’s hair, in awe of how soft it felt, the way the morning gloom brought out the subtle copper hue of it.

Something about the way the light shimmered through it triggered a memory, one not his own but there all the same as if he had lived it himself. “I think… wait. Do you remember the clamp wrench? In the toolbox out on the patio?”

Veris did, to his own surprise. “The one you-- Anakin was looking for?” When Veris thought back past that morning and Anakin’s surprise at finding the tool, a hundred memories came flooding over him all at once, every one of them pale, gossamer shadows revealing an entire life that seemed strange even as it was intimately familiar. _Because they are Obi-Wan’s memories._

_And I was once a shadow too. Unable to say or do anything unless Obi-Wan had done it first. I was a fear that kept him awake at night. A need that at times did the same._

_But now, oh now… Isten is right. We are free._

“He kept looking for it, and, and it finally appeared, didn’t it?” Isten smiled, remembering through Anakin’s eyes the gleaming wrench, the weight of it in his gloved hand, and the vein of the dark tracing through the metal, subtle enough to be invisible to the Jedi’s senses. _But not to mine. Not to a Sith’s._

“Yes. And last night…” Veris added thoughtfully, easily falling back into an oddly echoed image of Anakin on his knees and Obi-Wan’s hand tight in his hair. “Oh, last night was beautiful.”

“‘A stark symphony, fear and desire as one’,” Isten whispered along to a memory of Obi-Wan saying the same to him over a datapad.

With a growing, hungry smirk, Veris tangled his hand in Isten’s collars. He squeezed until Isten gave a gasp of approval at the pressure around his throat, pulling him down for a breathless kiss.

 

* * *

 

Obi-Wan sat out in the gardens, the cold rain bitter on his skin as he sat shirtless and cross-legged in the middle of one of the rambling paths. He hadn’t chosen this particular spot for any reason other than it was away from the house, away from the bedroom, away from the handsome man still sleeping there.

 _What have I done?_ Obi-Wan asked the endless grey overhead that left everything in dimness despite the late hour of the morning. He closed his eyes and tried once again to meditate, but whenever he tried all he could think of was Anakin.

Not the feel of Anakin in his hand, of the slick heat of Anakin’s mouth around him: even the rain couldn’t dampen the flash of lust those particular recollections brought.

That was not the thing that had driven Obi-Wan in a blind panic out of the house. A simple word had done that, looming large and monstrous in Obi-Wan’s mind alongside thoughts of Anakin.

_Mine._

Earlier that morning Obi-Wan had awoken to the colorless glow of another rainy day, warm and happy with the faintest memory of covers being pulled down around him before he had sunk into a deep, exhausted sleep atop the mattress on the floor.

Someone had been sleeping in his arms, lithe and firm, head nestled against Obi-Wan’s chest.

Anakin.

Languid and beautiful, golden highlights in his hair as it brushed against Obi-Wan’s throat, the younger man had lain luxuriously sprawled over Obi-Wan with his gloved arm nestled along his side.

Obi-Wan had marveled at this new world he found himself in, still half-asleep and drunk on the feeling of Anakin’s chest against his, the rise and fall of it as Anakin slumbered on to the endless murmur of rain outside.

 _Perfect. He is perfect_ , Obi-Wan had thought in wonder as he stroked Anakin’s hair, the ghosts of delicate curls slipping through his fingers as he did. He remembered Anakin against him in the dark the night before and the lovely, wanton way Anakin had sunk to his knees and pleasured him.

And for one terrifying, stark moment in that silent room, Obi-Wan had felt no embarrassment at what had happened. No shame at what they had done, at the way he had roughly tangled his hands in the same hair he now ran his fingers through so gently.

 _Mine_ , he had thought with a sweet, visceral satisfaction unlike anything he had known before. It was heady and new, as pure as it was savage, and it rolled through him like a storm front.

**_Mine._**

Obi-Wan’s breath had stilled at that realization, all of the air in his lungs gone as the power of that idea, the raw attraction of it, swept through his soul.

_No._

_Stars, no!_ Terror had flooded in, freezing him in place beneath Anakin as the trees rustled in a gust of wind outside.

_What have I done?_

There had been no thoughts after that, nothing rational to grab ahold of beyond the bare, panicked need to slide out from under Anakin as slowly and quietly as he could and then back into his pants with shaking hands before hurrying out of the bedroom.

Obi-Wan had left barefoot, without his saber or shirt or cloak, and he had welcomed the cool sting of the rain and the stones of the garden path under his feet as he strode outside aimlessly.

_Force no. Please no._

Now he sat in the middle of the path, his heart thudding in his chest as a gust of wind shot cold and unforgiving past him and set the flowers all around rustling in wet waves.

How long had he been here? Long enough his pants were soaked with rain, clammy against his legs, but beyond that he couldn’t say.

 _There is no emotion, there is peace_ , Obi-Wan began in vain, the sharp hunger in his soul mocking the Code that had so often brought comfort in his times of need. _There is no ignorance, there is knowledge._

_There is no passion, there is serenity._

He clenched his fists in his lap and tilted his head back into the rain, wishing with all his frightened soul for the words to be true as he finished the mantra and began it again.

_There is no emotion, there is peace._

_(but i love him)_

_There is no ignorance, there is knowledge._

_(i love him)_

_There is no passion, there is serenity._

_(and i want him)_

_There is no chaos, there is harmony._

_(more than I have anything in my life)_

_There is no death, there is the Force._

_(please don’t let me fall please)_

Obi-Wan leaned forward and buried his face in his wet, cold hands, trying to slow his breathing as the rain trickled down the back of his neck.

In the middle of his anguish, his instincts whispered a faint warning to him: someone was watching him. It was not the first time the idea had ghosted across his mind since they had come here, but there was an intensity to it that was different from before. He kept his eyes closed and let his hands sink to his lap as footsteps approached from behind, knowing there was only one person it could be after all of their searching the day before.

“Master?”

 _Anakin_ , he nevertheless thought with a mix of relief and anxiety at the puzzled question, too rattled to reach out with the Force, not daring to even touch their bond for fear of letting Anakin see how upset he was. “Yes?”

“What are you doing out here?” Anakin’s question drifted down to him, concern clear in his voice. He was close, just behind him, but Obi-Wan kept his eyes shut, unable to bring himself to look back at him.

“I… I need to meditate. A lot has happened.”

“I know,” Anakin said and Obi-Wan could hear the hint of a smile in his words.

_Oh, Anakin. You’ve always loved so freely. So deeply. Fighting, flying... even the senator for a time, and now me?_

_I’m not like you, dear one. I’m afraid of my own fire._

Eyes still closed, Obi-Wan felt a heavy, dry weight settle over him: the familiar feeling of cloth draping off his shoulders and back. _He brought me one of the cloaks we found_ , he thought with both gratitude and shame, tilting his head down silently and not arguing as Anakin pulled the hood up and over him with gentle touches.

“Come back inside, Master. You’ll get sick out here.”

“In a little while, Anakin.”

“Yes, Master.” Anakin’s hand rested on his shoulder, a soothing weight through the fabric, and then he was gone, his steps retreating back toward the house.

Obi-Wan waited until he was sure Anakin was gone and sighed, opening his eyes to find a pile of black pooled around him like ink.

 _Where did this come from?_ The cloaks they had found in their search had all been muted colors, but none of them had been black.

It was a heavier weave as well, like a Jedi robe, Obi-Wan thought as he rubbed a bit of it between his cold fingers and then slid his hand back into the depths of it. _It has sleeves?_

He stood up, puzzled, and pushed his arms through the voluminous sleeves, bare hands pale against the black when they emerged from the cuffs. The garment was just too long for him, but it was exactly like one of his own Temple-issue robes save the color.  

 _It has to be different. We’ve just been without our own for too long and I’m forgetting_ , Obi-Wan tried to tell himself as he looked back toward the house, but he knew it wasn’t true.

A nameless fear overtook him and he hurried back down the rainy path toward the mansion, bare feet splashing through puddles and the robe trailing like a shadow behind him.

 _Anakin!_ he sent through the bond, barely suppressing a sudden, irrational fear that somehow, someone else was here with them. _Anakin, where--_

 

* * *

 

_\--are you?_

The confused question drifted to Anakin from somewhere else, somewhere not in the warm cloud of covers Anakin lay face-down and half-asleep in.

There was a quiet shift along the mattress as someone sat down next to him.

“I’m right here, Obi-Wan,” he mumbled sleepily, the words muffled.

Smiling into the pillow, not awake enough to think clearly, Anakin wondered why Obi-Wan’s mental voice sounded so far away when he was so close, and from the feel of it placing his hands on the mattress on either side of Anakin’s head.

He gave a lazy, contented stretch and rolled over onto his back. “Good morning, Obi--”

The name died in his throat at the golden eyes intent on his.

“Good morning, Anakin,” Veris purred as Obi-Wan called out once again through their bond.

_Anakin!_

“You… you’re not real,” Anakin whispered, too stunned to do anything else, but Veris only lifted an eyebrow exactly as Obi-Wan did when he was amused.

“Are you sure?”

“You’re not real,” Anakin repeated with more determination, increasingly certain this had to be a dream no matter how crisply the sound of the trees rustling outside echoed in the dim room. “You’re just something we’re afraid of.”

Veris gave a nasty, knowing grin, eyes narrowing. “Are you afraid of us, dear one?”

Anakin opened his mouth to argue. And found a hand clenched around his throat, the palm hot and grip unforgiving.

Fear sang through Anakin, paralyzing him where he lay, as Veris leaned in closer to the creak of the mattress.

“I won’t hurt you, Anakin,” the Sith whispered, his lips almost brushing Anakin’s and his black tunics soft against Anakin’s bare chest. “But I think you might like it if I did.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> And enter the Sith boys from stage left. :D
> 
> I hope y'all enjoyed! I'll try to catch up with comments this weekend, but I promise I read and love and roll around in each one every time. <3 <3 <3 Thank you for your support, and for reading!


	10. Ghosts of the Past

Veris leaned back, sliding his hand away from Anakin’s throat to brush a lock of stray hair out of his face with an unsettling amount of tenderness for the ice in his eyes. “Call to Obi-Wan through your bond, Anakin,” he said quietly, tucking the lock behind his ear. “Tell him I’m here.”

Anakin snarled, metal hand curling at his side under the covers, but found he could make no move to attack him. Whether it was shock or the undeniably real, hypnotizing sight of Obi-Wan with golden eyes, he wasn’t sure, but he only sat up and slapped his hand away. “Don’t touch me.”

Veris stood up calmly and looked down at him, sure and confident and all in black, and Anakin felt an uncomfortable chill pass through him as he realized how naked and defenseless he was sitting on the mattress on the floor with only the sheets covering him. “Call to him,” Veris repeated, a fine, cold line of steel in the command, and Anakin’s throat dried up at how much he instinctively wanted to obey that voice.

“No,” he managed, even as Obi-Wan’s worry drummed against his mind.

 _Don’t come back to the bedroom!_ Anakin risked shooting across the bond, unsure if Veris would be able to hear anything directed at Obi-Wan.

 _Anakin?_ came the startled question. _Anakin!_

“No?” There was no change in Veris’s assured, hungry gaze as he smiled down at Anakin. “Are you sure you want to risk my displeasure, beautiful boy?”

Anakin flushed so deeply he felt it spiral down his throat and across his chest, hating how easily his body reacted to the suggestive question laced with the familiar, elegant tones of Obi-Wan’s accent. “I won’t let you hurt him.”

The sound of footsteps approaching in the hall made Veris glance toward the doorway, and when he looked away the strange trance his gaze had put Anakin in began to fade.

He tensed to launch himself at the Sith when he heard his own voice drift in, the obedient tones of it draining his courage as quickly as it had come at the understanding there were two of them.

“It’s done, Master.”

 _Isten?_ Anakin gaped as his own twin came in, lithe and feral with hair hanging in wet curls dotted with drops of water. One fell in a faint sparkle to disappear into the black tunic he wore neatly folded at the throat, the simple linen soaking the water up just as Anakin’s Temple clothing always did in the rain.

 _They’re here. They’re both real_ , he thought with a deep, wordless revulsion as he took in the slight skew of Isten’s collars and the ring of bites and marks peeking up like strange lace all around his tanned throat. _How?! I don’t understand!_

“Isten, where is your robe?” Veris asked as Isten gave a smirking nod to Anakin and crossed the room to flop lazily onto the unmade bed. He rolled onto his side to look down at Anakin, a few more drops of water falling from his hair as he propped himself up on his elbows.

“I saw Obi-Wan meditating outside, Master,” he said, yellow eyes studying Anakin with an intense curiosity as he continued to speak to Veris. “I didn’t want him to get sick. So I walked up behind him and put it on him.” A silence fell between the two, Anakin knowing from the way Isten’s head tilted he was sharing images with Veris through their bond.   

 _After all, it’s what I do when I’m concentrating_ , he observed with uneasy interest, no time for any further examination of what Isten had said when another set of footsteps echoed down the hall to a sudden, dangerous surge in the Force.

 

* * *

 

_Don’t come back to the bedroom!_

Obi-Wan’s heart was thudding in his chest by the time he reached the back door of the mansion and rushed inside to a horrible sense of reality splintering into an ugly echo of the past.

He was bare-chested with a strange, unnervingly familiar black robe on, a lock of wet hair hanging in his eyes as he strode inside over soft, dry rugs.

He was in his tunics and boots, robe discarded and forgotten in a hangar bay, a Padawan braid dangling by his ear as he ran over unforgiving duracrete.

The mansion’s hallways stretched out before him, dim and ruined, musty in the rainy weather as he cried out through the bond to Anakin once again and received no answer. _Anakin!_

Hissing energy barriers gave way just long enough to let him be trapped behind the last one with a silent scream of terrified anger. _Master!_

Obi-Wan pounded up the front hall’s wide stairs and rounded a corner down one of the side corridors toward their bedroom, the black waves of the robe billowing behind him drifting to a stop as the memory of Naboo overwhelmed him.

Darth Maul looked up at him with a sneer as he jerked his blade free from Qui-Gon’s stomach, the crimson of the barrier painting the scene a cruel red as his master fell to the ground.

That day the Sith had gone on to pace back and forth with an arrogant, wordless sneer as he awaited the opening of the gates.

But now he walked over to Obi-Wan, boots thudding across slick metal, to stop in front of him. He leaned in as close as the energy field would allow, and laughed in a raw, awful gurgle. “Welcome home, Obi-Wan.”

It sounded like someone attempting to speak with his throat cut.

“If they hurt Anakin, kill them.” This was his master’s voice, the baritone unmistakable despite the crackle of the barrier and his oddly flat tone, and Obi-Wan looked over in horror to find Qui-Gon sitting up, speaking even as death stiffened his body. “Kill them, Obi-Wan. Just like you did him.”

Darth Maul grinned in a frightening shift of his tattoos, and for a moment his eyes were black with no whites or sickly color left: only an endless, merciless void.

Startled, Obi-Wan took a step back and found himself once again in the present, in an unlit, empty hall with the rain drumming on the roof far overhead and the wet robe heavy on his shoulders as he gasped for air and tried to remember what had made him stop a moment before.

_What? What was that?_

_Did I see something?_ There were only muddled impressions and a fearful confusion, all of it quickly swept aside as rage boiled up inside him, a wild and protective fury blooming at the thought of harm coming to Anakin.

Obi-Wan stalked down toward their room with the Force coalescing into a deadly halo around him.

 

* * *

 

 _Master?_ Isten asked worriedly from the bed, frozen where he lay by the sheer anger radiating from the figure wreathed in black and ice standing in the doorway.

 _Let me handle him_ , Veris answered, stepping forward, his smooth voice showing none of the cautiousness Isten could feel ghosting through the bond. “Good morning, Obi-Wan.”

_Master expected Obi-Wan to be afraid. And he is. But he’s angry, too. So angry._

“Get away from him,” Obi-Wan hissed, hands curled into fists hidden under the generous sweep of the robe sleeves.

“As you wish.” Veris took a slow, unhurried step back: the two Sith flanked Anakin on either side, Isten on the bed, Veris standing off to the other side of the mattress. Anakin scrambled into his pants under the sheets and stood up, backing up to stand behind Obi-Wan as he fumbled with the waist.

The four of them stared at each other wordlessly to the drone of the rain outside, the Sith as fascinated as the Jedi were shocked.

“Anakin?” Veris finally said, the polite question breaking the silence. “What were you doing when I found you?”

“I was... I was sleeping,” Anakin replied before he realized he didn’t have to.

“On your stomach, without a care in the world.” Veris’s gaze flicked to Obi-Wan, as nonchalant as his tone, as if he couldn’t feel the Force churning violently around him. “I could have killed him. But I didn’t. I want you to remember that.”

The ebony ring around Obi-Wan crystallized into shards, and Anakin swallowed and put his hand on Obi-Wan’s shoulder. “Don’t listen to him, Obi-Wan. I’m ok. He’s just trying to goad you.”

Veris shook his head, waving a hand. “No, I am not. I would like to have a civil conversation with my… counterpart, as it were. Consider my sparing of your life a token of goodwill in that direction.”

“How?” Obi-Wan muttered in disbelief. “How is it you both are real? It’s not possible!”

“Bad tactics, Obi-Wan. A good tactician does not focus on what should be happening. He deals with what _is_ happening.” Veris smiled, folding his arms over his chest as he stepped back to stand against the far wall between two of the sweeping windows there. “And what is happening is that we are here. And the four of us are going to make a little deal. Engage in a little negotiation, if you will.”

“Kark you and your deals,” Anakin spat, reaching for his saber but his hand only landing against his hip.

“It was on the nightstand. Both of yours,” Veris said apologetically as Isten winked at them. “So I have spared Anakin’s life, and in an additional gesture of our goodwill, we will return your sabers later.”

“That… that makes no sense. Logically the next step would be to kill and replace us, but we are still alive,” Obi-Wan answered with bitter sarcasm, fighting a deepening sense of unreality despite the cold, clammy feeling of his wet pants against his skin and his damp hair dripping water down the back of his neck. “Could it be you need to know where the beacon is?”

“No. I sent Isten out to move it earlier,” Veris grinned, enjoying the slight widening of his eyes. “You see, I have all of your memories, Obi-Wan, right up until this morning.”

Anakin let out a curse under his breath as Obi-Wan did the same across the bond.

“And we have no desire to replace you, if I may be honest. Those memories of yours are bleak, Obi-Wan. The life of a dutiful Jedi. Fight, sleep alone in that tiny bunk of yours or out in the actual dirt in the field, plan battles, risk your life some more, drown in meetings, run here and there according to the Council, repeat.”

“You’re not any better,” Isten shrugged over at Anakin, sitting up.

“What do you want then?” Anakin growled, hand tight on Obi-Wan’s shoulder, hating how comfortable and at ease the two Sith were.

Isten swung his long legs over the opposite side of the bed from Veris and rose to go to one of the windows Veris lounged between as the older Sith held out a hand to him. “The same thing you want. We want off of this planet.” He turned back toward them, tan face silhouetted against the delicate grey of the sky. “I want to see the galaxy.”

“And I learned quickly I have such a hard time telling him no,” Veris said with a fond glance over at him that shifted immediately back to Obi-Wan. “You understand.”

Obi-Wan’s only response was a withering glare, half of it total disdain for Veris and the other half a growing concentration on fighting that strange doubling of the world around him.

“So,” Veris continued calmly, “it would seem we are in need of transportation off of this world. And you have a rescue ship on its way, perhaps. What a lovely coincidence.”

“What do you mean, ‘perhaps’?” Anakin glared at Isten, whose grin had faded as he turned back and looked at Obi-Wan.

“Assuming, of course, my dear Isten and I survive this little get-together and go turn the beacon back on. You didn’t think we’d come here without assurances, did you?” Veris said, a hint of a frown on his face as Isten’s head canted once again.

 _Master, there’s something wrong,_ Isten whispered across their bond, his hand sliding into Veris’s as they stood together _. With Obi-Wan. Don’t you feel it?_

“What good is our rescue ship going to do you?” Obi-Wan asked reluctantly, fighting back a nauseating, incoherent swell of wrath. _I must calm myself_. _I must think clearly._ “Unless you kill and replace us?”

 _If you hurt Anakin I will murder you both. Without pity._ The vicious declaration startled Obi-Wan even as he thought it, and he clenched his fist hard enough against his palm it hurt in an attempt to refocus himself.

Veris kept his face carefully neutral, but Isten was right: there was a vein of the dark, ugly and black, winding through Obi-Wan’s halo. It did not emanate from inside him, but rather it seemed to be slipping in from around him in a dangerous, hazy wash of ink staining his Force signature.

 _He’s off-balance_ , Veris noted. _Good. As long as we don’t push him too close to the line it will work to our advantage._ “Let’s walk through that possibility, shall we? Let’s say we murder the both of you and are able to pass ourselves off to dear Ahsoka and your men. Once we get back to a command ship or a base we then vanish one night, disappearing off in a smaller ship.”

He shook his head as the two Jedi fixed him with cold expressions. “The Republic would search for months. The Order might search for years. What have the holos started calling you, Anakin? ‘The Hero With No Fear’, isn’t it? And Obi-Wan Kenobi, the Order’s best ‘Negotiator’. Both gone, vanished!”

Sliding his hand out of Isten’s, he folded his arms again, settling back against the other window. The two Sith stood there, twin shadows against the light, Veris’s educated voice a soothing lilt that mocked Anakin and Obi-Wan’s building anger. “Rumors, gossip, and sightings would abound, no doubt. There would not be a minute’s peace for us. So no. We have no interest in taking your dubious places of honor. It’s very important to us you stay exactly where you are, doing what you are.”

“Then how do you plan to use our rescue ship?” Anakin growled, hating how helpless he felt in the face of them.

 _All or nothing_ , Veris told himself with the same adrenaline rush he knew was an echo of what Obi-Wan would feel in his place, unsure of which way the Jedi would go with the dark attempting to coalesce around him. “To make sure we are not trapped here, one of us will go with one of you when the ship arrives.”

“What?” Obi-Wan spat.

“When the rescue ship comes, Anakin and I will go back on it,” Veris continued as Isten settled into a hard, puzzled stare over Obi-Wan’s shoulder, ignoring Anakin on the other side of him.

“You will stay here with Isten, Obi-Wan, until I can arrange a discreet return.”

Obi-Wan let out a sharp laugh of disbelief. “You think you could pass yourself off as me? Even if you could, what stops me from revealing myself and ordering my men to shoot you the second the ship arrives?”

“I’ve thought about that myself. Probably the fact that I know everything you do,” Veris said with a cold smile. “So I would say that you were an imposter and give information only you would have, and then your poor, confused men would arrest us all and take Isten and I back to the Council. Imagine, oh imagine, Obi-Wan, what an uncomfortable conversation _that_ would be. Explaining where we came from. Explaining what we are.”

“I love him,” Anakin said, taking Obi-Wan’s cool hand in his own as Obi-Wan blinked in shock. “I’m not afraid to say that. And everyone has fears. So what if the Council sees you?”

“True. You two might end up retiring and leaving the Order,” Veris admitted, pleased Anakin was so quick to admit aloud to the love he knew it still frightened Obi-Wan to consider. “But I don’t think you’d get very far.”

“Why?” Obi-Wan asked, loathing the confident raise of Veris’s eyebrow. _Here it comes. Whatever he has up his sleeve._

“Well, while Tusken Raiders are not considered full citizens of Tatooine, I’m sure the Council would do more than frown upon the slaughter of… how many was it again, Isten?”

“A whole village of them,” Isten answered absentmindedly, still distracted by whatever had gotten his attention.

Anakin and Obi-Wan froze where they stood, all speech gone.

“I imagine that would likely count as a crime of some sort in the Republic courts, hmm?”

Anakin whimpered, a broken, pathetic sound, and his hand trembled in Obi-Wan’s.

Something snapped within Obi-Wan, fury rushing through him, cold and bracing, and a cruel, alien sense of delight flowed in alongside it. “You want to negotiate?” he heard himself snarl. “If you truly are me, you have the same weaknesses I do, don’t you?” _What am I doing? What is happening to me?_

Veris narrowed his eyes, unfolding his arms and drawing up taller.

At the same time Obi-Wan was dimly aware Isten’s lips were moving, but whatever he was trying to say came out too soft to carry across the room, or perhaps the blood pounding in Obi-Wan’s ears was too loud. There was only rage and excitement, the former as bleakly familiar as the latter was incomprehensible and strange.

Dazed, Obi-Wan watched his hand shoot out and Isten fall back against the paneled wall with a thud, the younger Sith drawing a thin, reedy gasp and clutching at the delicate woodwork behind him as the Force whirled into a vise around his throat.

 _What am I doing?_ Obi-Wan asked himself again with a slow, vague sense of concern that seemed to be coming from someone much further away as Veris cried out, the pleasant tones of his voice marred with fear.

“No!” Veris dropped a hand to his own saber but immediately lifted it back at Obi-Wan’s detached words, ones that seemed to come out of nowhere.

“I wouldn’t do that if I were you. We both know I could snap his neck before you could draw.” _Did I say that?_

 _And I could_ , Obi-Wan observed, putting together the simple thought with an incredible amount of difficulty as the Force twisted inside of him. _But why would I want to? He is like Anakin. He came from Anakin._

 _He is not Anakin. Do it_ , the answer drifted in, garish as fresh blood. _Kill him. Kill both of them. Keep Anakin safe. Keep_ **_your_ ** _Anakin safe._

“Master?” Anakin asked, heart beating so fast he thought it would rattle out of his chest at the sight of Isten pinned against the wall and Obi-Wan’s steady, unwavering hand pointed at him. “What are you doing?” There was no time to think and the noise of the house washing over him in higher and higher crests, frightening and relentless.

“Anakin. Take our sabers back. And theirs.” _That way they won’t be an active threat to us_ , Obi-Wan slowly and carefully answered the voice. He watched Anakin cautiously cross to take the three hilts Veris held out with trembling hands, Obi-Wan’s and Veris’s almost identical.

_They are Sith. They will always be a threat. Kill Isten and then Veris before he can recover. He certainly wouldn’t expect that, would he? The bastard. Kill them both and no one will know._

Anakin holstered his own saber and reluctantly moved to Isten, trapped against the paneling by the ugly knot of the Force resting snugly around his throat. Anakin took Isten’s lightsaber from his belt, eyes downcast as he did.

Isten’s was exactly like his.

Obi-Wan’s thoughts swirled in a dizzying and hypnotic tide back and forth as Anakin came back to him and hooked Obi-Wan’s back onto his belt and tucked the Siths’ hilts into the back of his own.

 _That is enough. They have been disarmed_ , Obi-Wan told himself, but his hand stayed where it was, splayed out in a graceful, deadly arc toward Isten.

_Not enough. Kill them._

_Why?_

_Kill them and no one will ever know about Tatooine. About the dark in Anakin. About the dark in you._

Veris was begging in low moans, all the cool condescension of earlier gone as he understood the ugly truth about where his own darkness came from. “Please don’t hurt him. Please.”

Obi-Wan turned away from him, expressionless, to study Isten as the whisper at the back of his mind grew more insistent. _Break his neck. Just a quick little crack like a branch in a storm, like white porcelain hitting tile, all it takes is a tilt of your hand-- just so-- and concentrate-- just so-- do it do it why are you waiting do you want them to hurt Anakin you know they will and then they will kill him we must keep him safe you must keephimsafe DO IT DO IT--_

“Obi-Wan,” Anakin begged, a note of fear in his own voice at the empty way Obi-Wan was staring at Isten and ignoring Veris’s hoarse pleas. _Obi-Wan! Stop! You’re scaring me!_

Obi-Wan let out an incoherent cry and the Force shuddered around him.

The invisible pressure around Isten’s throat vanished as Obi-Wan collapsed in a shaking heap and the Sith bent over in a wracking fit of coughing and tried not to pitch forward.

“Master!” Anakin screamed, catching Obi-Wan just before he hit the floorboards, lowering his twitching, seizing body the rest of the way. Obi-Wan lay pale against the black of the robe piled around him, clawing mindlessly at the air. “Master!”

At the same time, Veris ran to Isten as he slumped against the wall, but he weakly pushed Veris aside and stumbled over to kneel on the other side of Obi-Wan from Anakin. “Stop it!” he rasped down at Obi-Wan, in a violent, blind panic, fingers curling against the wooden floorboards. “Stop it!”

“Isten?” Veris shouted, as lost as Anakin was. “Isten!”

“What did you do to him?” Anakin screamed at Isten over Obi-Wan’s trembling form, but before the Sith could answer both Isten and Obi-Wan went perfectly still.

The only motion was Isten’s eyes rolling back into his head, and then in an awful new silence punctuated only by Veris and Anakin’s gasps he slumped over, as unconscious as Obi-Wan now was.

Veris barely caught him before he tumbled forward, jerking Isten back against his chest. He stared like a wild, cornered animal at Anakin from over Isten’s shoulder, terrified and furious, hands clenched tight in the layers of Isten’s clothing.

Anakin didn’t notice, hands on Obi-Wan’s bare chest as he fought the noise all around him in an attempt to send healing energy through him. _Be alright. Be alright. You have to be alright. You have to!_

The light flowed through him much easier than he thought it would, than it had the entire time they had been in this strange place. To his deep, almost incoherent relief, the Force told him Obi-Wan was simply unconscious at this point, that there was nothing physically wrong with him.

For a second Anakin imagined the darkness of the mansion sliding out of the room like the shadow of a gargantuan snake, out of the door and away.

 _Down_ , he found himself thinking without knowing why.

Through his amazement, Veris’s puzzled grimace confirmed it: something unimaginable had happened.

The oppressive weight of the dark was gone. The Force around them was still unnaturally strong, but in Anakin’s mind Isten and Veris stood out like obsidian stars in the white of an inverted night sky, remarkable for their darkness rather than lost in a sea of it.

Veris was cursing under his breath, frightened, stroking Isten’s hair and murmuring to him, pleading with him to wake up.

 _He probably can’t heal that well, if at all_ , Anakin realized with an unexpected pang of sympathy for the man despite what he was. _He can’t tell what’s wrong with him._

“Veris,” he whispered, and when the Sith’s distraught gaze met his own, he reached out hesitantly over Obi-Wan without looking away. _I shouldn’t be doing this_ , he told himself, but he was helpless in the face of Veris’s pain, pain that looked and sounded just like his own master’s.

Isten’s head lolled bonelessly against Veris’s chest, and Anakin let his fingers come to rest on his cheek as Veris watched with a frantic mix of hope and wariness.

Anakin fought down the adrenaline and unease pumping through him at the smoldering spark of Isten’s presence that curled around his hand, and closed his eyes, concentrating on the flows of energy through this bizarre, distorted mirror of himself.

“He’s ok,” Anakin murmured, taking his hand back and resting it once again on Obi-Wan’s shoulder, Obi-Wan’s light burning away the traces of blackness clinging to him. “Just passed out. Like Obi-Wan.”

“Thank you,” Veris said, voice thick with emotion as he held Isten close to his chest, unable to believe what Anakin had just done. “Thank you. We will not hurt you. You have my word. I swear it.”

“Good. What... what just happened?” Anakin asked in a low, cautious tone, afraid the question would somehow break the fragile sense of peace the retreating darkness had left behind.

“I don’t know.” Veris took a deep breath as he laid Isten down next to Obi-Wan with more gentleness than Anakin would have thought him capable of. “But something has changed. Something here in the house.”

Anakin nodded, too grateful Obi-Wan was alive to say anything else. The noise in his head was still there, like it always was, like it would always be, but it wasn’t as frightening, as vicious and relentless as it had become in recent days.

 _Maybe if we’re lucky they’ll just disappear too_ , he thought, glancing over to watch Veris take Isten’s hand in his own, but the morning gloom glinted just as brightly in Isten’s damp hair as it did in Obi-Wan’s, the water sparkling as if in a taunt.

Despite Obi-Wan’s strange actions, ones Anakin was too exhausted to give proper thought to at the moment, Obi-Wan had not been able to kill Isten when it came down to it.

Anakin knew, no matter how ashamed he was to admit it, that he would not be able to kill Veris.

_Whatever happens, they are now part of it._

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Hello everyone! I'm back!
> 
> Thank you so much for reading! What did you think? 
> 
> Also, I know I am hideously behind on responding to comments and apologize for that. I will try to catch up sometime soon. It's been a rough month for work and getting sick: to give you an idea I was only able to write a few hundred words at a time, which is very low for me. Anyway, hopefully this month will be better.
> 
> Thanks again for your support and take care! <3


	11. Flight

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Hello! I'm back! Thank you for your patience and please skim the tags before reading if you are sensitive to certain things as I've added a new one. Thank you!

In the unnerving silence that followed, Veris watched the way Anakin studied the open doorway of the bedroom, the visceral dread creeping through the Sith making every detail of Anakin’s fine profile stand out sharp and clear.

Isten would be all right. He was safe. They were safe, Veris told himself. Whatever awful thing had happened was over.

_Then why do I feel so ill at ease?_

Was it fear the dark of the house had vanished, leaving him and Isten exposed in the powerful, aimless fog of the Force that hung over the ruined estate?

 _No._ It wasn’t that. _Not all of it, anyway_.

Veris struggled to find a way to define his unease, and a memory of Obi-Wan’s leapt to mind in the peculiar, spotlit way apparently all of Obi-Wan’s memories would come to him: after he concentrated on the vague, almost meaningless impression, an empty beach on a long-forgotten world came into view.

He saw an endless stretch of sand in either direction left bare and wet as Qui-Gon and a much younger Obi-Wan ran with the locals for higher ground, ran before the waves that had drained away returned to crush them all.

_Whatever it is, is it gone? Or just retreating?_

“We should get out of here,” he muttered. “Now.”

Anakin turned back toward him and the Jedi’s eyes dropped to the two men sprawled out between them, Obi-Wan’s skin pale against the black robe he still wore and Isten’s gloved hand lying heavily across his own chest. “I… I agree. But where are we going to go? The pack animals in the woods we’ve heard...”

“Do not have lightsabers. And we do,” Veris replied dryly, mind racing. “We’ll carry them. One of us can come back for the beacon once Isten wakes up and tells us where it is.”

“You don’t know where it is?” Anakin frowned, standing to grab the borrowed cloaks from over the chair they had been left on and tossing one at Veris before fixing him with a suspicious look and kneeling to take Obi-Wan’s saber from his belt.

“I said I meant you no harm,” Veris growled as he watched Anakin drop the three extra sabers into a small bag of rations they had put together earlier.

“Where is the beacon?” Anakin said, ignoring his protests as he slung the bag over his shoulder and knelt next to Obi-Wan. _He’s right about leaving_ , Anakin thought. _Even though I can feel the light more strongly than ever here now, there’s something subtle under it, too. Something ugly. Rotten._

“I don’t know. We don’t share thoughts anymore. Not the way we did… before this morning.”

“How do I know you’re not lying? How do I know I can trust you?”

The withering glare Veris fixed him with made Anakin’s breath catch in his throat, but he lifted his chin and refused to give in to the imperiousness of his gaze.

“Pretty little fool,” the Sith grumbled, lifting his hand slowly so as not to startle Anakin, his palm facing him and fingers spreading out. “I would rather not do this but we may not have time to sit and bicker.”

It was an invitation to meditate with him, or at least to touch minds, the ultimate arbiter of sincerity. Something he and Obi-Wan had done as easily as breathing in the last year, a casual intimacy growing between them despite the sometimes rocky nature of their friendship.

“You can’t be serious.” Anakin bit off any further protests, eyes darting to Obi-Wan and back up again as he considered leaving the two Sith there.

“You’ll need me if those animals in the woods come for you and he’s still not awake,” Veris said, a thin veneer of calm over the anger that flashed in his eyes as he left his hand hanging in the air between them.

“Why do you need me?”

“The same reason.”

“Swear you won’t hurt me. Or him.” Anakin grabbed his hand, refusing to be gentle or acknowledge any feeling other than the comforting spark of defiance as their fingers twined around each other’s.

Veris regarded him with an unreadable expression as the bittersweet smoke of the dark curled through Anakin’s soul at his touch, voice somber. “I swear I will not hurt you, or Obi-Wan.”

Anakin let out a small sigh of relief and pulled his hand back, satisfied for the moment. _He means it. For now, anyway._

_He’s too scared for Isten not to._

 

* * *

 

Obi-Wan drifted somewhere utterly without light, somewhere blacker than the void between stars, in pain so overwhelming he wondered for a brief flicker of coherency if he had somehow ended up in space without a suit.

He had been watching himself from a distance in the mansion, everything a faded echo of what it should have been as he had held Isten easily against the far wall of the bedroom.

Anakin had cried aloud through their bond, his fear slicing through the haze surrounding Obi-Wan, and just as Obi-Wan felt himself rushing back into his body something had crashed over him like an unseen wave from behind, sweeping him into this nightmare.

The raw power of it swirled around him with brutal strength, fighting to get inside of him, icy water trying to choke and drown him.

_It hurts it hurts stop please stop make it stop!_

The only reply was a disgust as cold as the void around him.

_weak so weak so fragile and frail and USELESS_

And then a hand was around Obi-Wan’s wrist, warm and soothing, and the pain stopped as abruptly as it had started: a new vision overtook him in a drift of balmy air and a starlit sky washing into existence overhead.

He was back at the mansion, the hand still on his wrist, he and another man looking out over a moonlit pond.

_The western patio. Where we sit during the day._

That was the only rational thought Obi-Wan could manage as he took in the shadows of Cirese lilies floating along the onyx mirror of the water before them. He felt hollow and raw, as if something horrible had scraped along every bone in his body, and he leaned against the railing and fought the urge to run to the pond to try to scrub the sensation away.

“Stay quiet, Master,” a familiar voice said as the hand anchoring him slid down to wrap around his. “Please.”

He looked up, heart still trembling, to find Anakin looking at him with impossibly colored eyes. Ones that were a faint bronze here, ones that would be an unmistakable gold in daylight.

 _Sith_ , Obi-Wan thought for a panicked moment before he found a name stealing into his mind as their fingers touched and curled together.

_Isten._

As the warmth of Isten’s palm centered him, Obi-Wan found the rich, heady streak of the dark in Isten’s soul oddly comforting because it was the first thing to make sense here. Turning from Isten, he looked around in wonder and a breathless terror, unable to pinpoint the source of the anxiety that suddenly flooded through him.

The mansion looked new. Lights glowed in warm circles and rings from the entire first floor and most of the rooms on the second, and the faint beat of a pleasant song could be heard from somewhere inside.

The gardens sat in beautiful, lush clouds of carefully manicured blossoms, winding all around the patio and estate and cast in amber hues by the soft illumination coming from the house.

 _It’s a memory_ , he whispered to Isten without speaking, surprised to find that, at least in this unsettling vision, a ghost of his bond with Anakin also existed between him and the Sith.

 _I think this was the last time it was angry_ , Isten murmured back, eyes intent on the mansion and hand trembling against Obi-Wan’s. _We have to stay quiet. Small. I think... I think we touched minds with it when I tried to save you from it. I think we’re seeing one of its memories._

The dread hanging over Obi-Wan coalesced into a single image, that of a small ship just missing the deadly edge of a black hole. _No,_ he thought with a sudden, icy certainty, _that’s not quite right._

_A black hole will not reach out to take you if it realizes you are there._

Isten closed his eyes and concentrated. _I think… I think I’m hiding us from it. The dark in me. That’s why it doesn’t know we’re here._

Obi-Wan squeezed Isten’s hand to show he agreed, stunned as he realized how much of the dark pervaded the memory spread out around them, thick and repulsive in a way the mansion had never felt to him in the time they had been there.

_Was it stronger then? Or has it been hiding its strength from us?_

A couple left the mansion through the same graceful doors Anakin and Obi-Wan had left propped open during their days resting and tinkering on the patio, coming toward them silently. The woman was wreathed in warm, golden halos as the mansion’s lights caught in the pale velvet folds of her gown, the man next to her in the sharp, layered angles of an outdated style of suit.

They were holding hands but walking in a strange, stilted manner as they crossed the patio and walked past Obi-Wan and Isten without seeming to sense them or the looming horror that drifted invisible around them.

Blood trailed from the man’s nose and the woman’s mouth, tracing ugly lines down expensive fabrics and the sparkling trims along their throats and chests.

 _What’s wrong with them? Where are they going?_ Isten asked, fingers tightening around Obi-Wan’s at the blackness that trailed through the Force in the pair’s wake.

Obi-Wan watched the couple descend a set of steps into the garden and slowly continue on toward the pond, now only silhouettes with the train of the woman’s dress hissing through the grass. _I… I don’t know._

An alien thought came to the both of them at the same time, stark and cruel.

_weak you are all so weak_

Obi-Wan and Isten instinctively drew together at the voice, its hateful disdain directed at the man and woman rather than them but terrifying nonetheless. The thing that had spoken had never been human. Whatever it was, it had never known mercy, or warmth, and it never would.

_useless and weak_

A sadistic joy swelled past Obi-Wan and Isten out toward the couple, cutting through them like a gust of winter wind, and Obi-Wan realized what was about to happen. _No. Stars, no._

The pair’s hands were shaking now, but they kept going, fading to dim shapes as they waded out into the pond and kept walking. The dull gleam of lilies along the water’s surface trembled as they passed, the long back of the man’s coat swirling across the ripples they left behind.

The delight grew around them, unspeakable and merciless. _yes pathetic useless yes_

_die both of you_

_DIE_

Isten let out a whimper, and in this odd hinterland of reality where they hung half-real, Obi-Wan instinctively reached up to turn Isten’s face down into his chest, the sound of Anakin in distress too much to bear. “Shh,” he whispered, stroking the curls at the back of Isten’s neck.

Obi-Wan forced himself to watch, terrified that if they both turned away the thing they had inadvertently followed here would sense the anomalies lurking along the edge of its mind. He had to do what it did.

And what it was doing was watching in seething, furious satisfaction.

The couple strode wordlessly into the water, the woman’s long jeweled tresses the last to disappear beneath the placid mirror of the pond. A few violent splashes broke the surface, bubbles scattering, and then there was silence once again, the two moons high in the sky as the ghosts of the lilies swayed in the waves.

Obi-Wan clutched Isten’s head against his chest, sending a desperate prayer out into the Force. _Don’t let it sense us. Please._

The vicious pleasure coursing through the air around them shifted into puzzlement at a burst of sound from the far side of the mansion. Obi-Wan didn’t need the thing’s confused recognition to know what the hollow, keening cry was. _A blaster pistol._

A steady stream of shots pierced the low hum of evening crickets and the music still drifting out of the house, one hard blast after another, and by the seventh Obi-Wan and Isten found themselves dragged along in a gut-wrenching swirl back toward the house.

 _No. NO_!

Isten curled tighter against Obi-Wan at the wordless scream, rumbling through the Force like thunder.

The thing swept through the house with them in tow, too fast for them to register anything save blood streaked long and bright along one wall and someone crying behind a closed door, rushing toward the hissing beat of blaster fire.

And then they stopped, in a bright, expansive room it took Isten and Obi-Wan only a moment to place despite how new and clean the stacks of machinery looked. _The comm center._

Every comm board lay with a smoking hole through the middle of it, the shots clearly growing more desperate as they moved from one side of the room to the other. Far to the right, the man who had done it was frantically scraping at a blank patch of metal on one board with a small knife. A blaster lay dropped on the floor next to him.

Isten and Obi-Wan knew what he was writing.

_don’t fix it_

The dark-side creature they had followed let out an enraged screech in the Force that was so strong even the man looked up from his work for a moment before turning back to it with panicked, grating pulls of his blade. They sensed the invisible thing try to reach for him, to crash over him as it had over Obi-Wan, but the man had only the tiniest spark of Force-sensitivity and it passed right through him with another shriek of wrath.

The heavy thud of footsteps sounded outside in the hallway, and the man whirled toward them, holding the knife out.

A second man, younger than the first, dressed in the same outdated fashions, stood in the doorway, handsome face distorted with anger. “What have you done?”

“I had to, Samal,” the saboteur cried, shaking his head. “Don’t you see?”

 _The owner. Samal is the owner of the estate_ , Obi-Wan remembered, in the midst of his horror stunned to see the man whose journals he had been reading. Samal was tall and graceful, a classical example of Telladorian nobility from his long, carefully tied hair to the thick golden bracelet he wore on his left hand.

The bracelet shook as Samal clenched his fist, fighting for words as he took in the smoking wreck of the comm center. “We... we will find a way to fix this, but first you are going to tell me where my beloved is.”

The color drained from the other man’s face, and a new, perverse glee began to rise unseen around Obi-Wan and Isten.

“What?” the man hissed. “What are you talking about?”

“You know damn well!” Samal thrust an accusing finger back into the hallway toward the rest of the mansion. “My love! She’s gone! Where is she? What did you do to her?”

The man held up his knife as Samal took one step forward and then another. “Stay back!”

“You were jealous of us, weren’t you?” Samal hissed. “Of how much she loved me! Not you! Never you! She’ll never be yours!”

Isten shuddered as the thing reached out through the Force and into Samal’s soul, ink spreading across his aura, and the blaster on the floor snapped through the air into Samal’s hand.

 _Force-sensitive,_ Obi-Wan had just enough time to think. _He could have been a Jedi._

And then Samal shot the man, a blinding arc of bolts cutting him down to the din of fire and Samal’s screams roaring through the comm center.

 _yes yes kill him,_ came the savage cry from all around them as the air pulsed with ozone and smoke.

_kill him_

_KILL HIM_

Obi-Wan and Isten recoiled with such terror the scene shattered, the awful thread of connection between them and the creature snapping in a brittle line of ice along the Force.

They spiraled downward into blissful unconsciousness and away from each other, hands sliding apart and the last thing to fade away the faint, shimmering trace of a bond between the two of them.

 

* * *

 

Anakin and Veris took slow, cautious steps down the wide sweep of stairs in the grand hall with simple packs heavy against their sides and Obi-Wan and Isten over their respective shoulders, the emptiness of the house no less ominous despite the darkness seeping away. There was still so much latent power here, as dangerous as a live wire in an engine harness, and Anakin clenched his jaw as he tried to let just a little inside to supplement his own strength.

_Out into the woods. Come on. I can do this._

Carrying an unconscious man out of a battle to safety was usually not difficult between his talent for the Force and the adrenaline of combat, and Anakin found himself giving a bitter smile of disappointment that there was no firefight here to spur him on.

Just the tomb-like mansion and the noise buzzing through his skull, that horrible sense of imbalance that seemed to persist no matter what he did and made especially sharp by the estate’s unsettling atmosphere.

_I hate this place._

“We’ll take the path to the river,” he grunted to Veris. “But not back to the wreckage. It carved out a low spot. Probably full of water by now. Different spot.”

Veris nodded in grim agreement and went first once he saw Anakin was not going to let him walk behind him.

The gloomy halls of the mansion gave way to the cool silver haze of a rainy day and the looping swirls of the overgrown gardens, faded rugs replaced by wet stone and then the endless dirt of the simple path leading away from the estate. Obi-Wan was an awkward weight growing heavier and heavier across his shoulders by the minute, and when they were almost to the river Anakin swallowed a harsh breath before calling ahead.

“Turn right off the path, up by that stump.”

“What’s out there?” Veris made an awkward turn back, Isten’s arms swinging limply as he did, and Anakin could see the Sith was struggling as much as he was.

The odd tides of the Force that enveloped the house were not as evident out here in the forest, and it seemed from Veris’s gritted teeth the individual flows of dark were just as hard to tap into as the light. _At least we’ll be evenly balanced out here_ , Anakin observed before answering in rough gasps.

“Clearing with a few big trees growing together in the middle of it. Found it awhile back.” Anakin jerked his shoulders to readjust Obi-Wan’s dead weight and tried not to curse at the pack strap biting into his chest. “Good cover, should be drier.”

Veris jerked his hooded head to the side to indicate Anakin should take the lead, clearly lost and apparently too tired to make a sarcastic observation about needing Anakin to show him where to go. _If I found the clearing before today Isten should know about it and therefore Veris, shouldn’t he? From what he said in the bedroom?_ Anakin thought as he reluctantly took the lead.

_I guess it’s not that easy to do._

_Maybe that’s a good thing._

The four men disappeared into the forest, swallowed up by branches laden with green and shivering with rain. They wound along through the cool gloom, past the solemn towers of trees and through patches of ferns that whispered along their legs, Veris so intent on keeping up with Anakin he almost didn’t hear Isten’s weak groan.

“Master?”

“Ana-- Isten?”

Anakin turned back, surprise on his face as Veris felt Isten shifting on his back.

Veris came to a halt and dropped to his knees in a patch of leaves and moss, sliding Isten off as gently as he could to the damp ground. “Isten?”

Anakin took a step back from them but made no move to leave. His hands tightened on Obi-Wan, his chin lifting as he watched Isten sit up and scrub his hands through his damp hair. The Sith was wrapped in one of their borrowed cloaks, a simple and elegant shade of deep indigo, but the second he looked up with hazy golden eyes there was no question what he was. _If you hurt Obi-Wan somehow..._

“Isten, are you all right?” Veris whispered again, taking the younger man’s face in his hands and tilting it up to him.

“Yes, Master. I… I think?”

Veris sighed in relief at the soft, familiar hum of fine machinery in Isten’s gloved hand as he brought it up to rest over Veris’s.

“What happened?” he asked, stroking his cold thumb along Isten’s cheek to reassure himself he was awake and safe, not caring about anything else in the world at that moment. “What happened in the bedroom?”

“It… it was there. The thing in the house. It wanted Obi-Wan. Couldn’t you see it, Master? And then, and then we saw the house, but it was--”

“Where’s the beacon?” Anakin cut in, lowering Obi-Wan’s limp form to the ground, furious and guilty at the thought he hadn’t been able to sense the attack himself. “We need to get out of here. Where did you hide it?”

Veris glared up at him, but before Isten could answer, Anakin felt a chill pass through him that cut deeper than the weather. He knew exactly what the Sith would say, and as his gaze met Isten’s they spoke together in an uneasy echo to the drone of the rain on the canopy far overhead.

“In the library.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> It has been a really rough time for me recently, between work and medical issues, and I am so thankful for all of you reading. Your support and kudos and comments have made all this easier, and I am thankful for you! <3 <3 <3
> 
> And my very late replies to comments are coming this week, as my dad would put it, "come hell or high water."
> 
> So what did you think? Any thoughts? Theories? General threats or bribes to keep the boys safe from me? 
> 
> And the eternal question... will there be sweet sweet love-making in this story for our boys? You know there will, but let's let them at least flee the creepy house first, right? XD


	12. Refuge

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Hello! As a heads up, this chapter came in at just over 7,500 words, so it's a much longer one than usual. I hope you enjoy!

Anakin sat in silence by the campfire they had made earlier in the day, a warm blaze of kindling and logs piled atop a latticework of sticks that would keep the fire above the damp ground until it burned hot enough to dry it out. Veris had laid out the crossed base with the same neat precision of Obi-Wan as Anakin gathered kindling and Isten rested against a nearby log.

Anakin had hated how much Veris, with his eyes downcast, resembled Obi-Wan in even his mannerisms as he worked.

Their campsite was the flat, relatively dry space under the three large trees that dominated this small clearing, and as the grey day had drifted into evening the first rifts in the clouds appeared far overhead, sending golden streamers of twilight through the forest. Now both the rain and the sun were gone, the only light the flickering halo of the fire casting Anakin and Veris in harsh shadows as they sat across from each other.

Isten was seated cross-legged next to Veris, his hood pulled low and breathing steady and even. He had volunteered for first watch through the Force for the pack animals that might be out here in the woods with them, and surprised Anakin at how easily he had settled into meditation.

Isten’s way seemed more of a sharp drop into focused awareness than the easy lull of Obi-Wan’s teachings, but seeing a version of himself able to center his spirit so quickly at all was yet another shock to Anakin in a day already full of them.

“How far away will he be able to sense them?” he murmured to Veris, snapping a twig and throwing it in the fire.

“How far can you?” Veris asked.

“Far enough,” Anakin grumbled, looking down at Obi-Wan asleep with his head in his lap. Obi-Wan’s aura radiated exhaustion akin to that after a days-long battle with no rest, and Anakin tried to reassure himself that was all it was. _He’ll wake up soon. He just needs his sleep._

He glanced back up at Isten, remembering what little his Sith twin had said before Isten’s recollection of the morning began to slide out of focus, his uneasy subconscious eager to push away the grotesque sight. _“It was behind Obi-Wan, but it wasn’t really there. I couldn’t make out any features...it was like a smudge on the air, in the Force. Just this vague shape that was like a human, but too thin and too tall. And it was hunched over him, trying to... to crawl inside him, I guess. Inside his soul. Like an insect burrowing into the ground. It was horrible.”_

“I still say that I should be the one to go back and get the beacon,” Veris said, peeling the silver wrapper back from a ration bar with careful distaste. “The sooner we’re off this planet the better.”

“No. It went after Obi-Wan, so you’re probably vulnerable to it too.” Anakin hadn’t been as certain when the two of them had argued about it earlier, Isten clinging to Veris in a muted daze, but the more time passed the more sure he was. “We keep the plan the same. When Obi-Wan wakes up, Isten and I go back.”

“I don’t like you going, much less Isten going with you.”

“I don’t like leaving the two of you alone here with Obi-Wan. Besides, Isten and I must be too strong for it. Or it would have gone for one of us, right?”

“Even if Isten will be safe, it’s a risk for you to go. You couldn’t even see it.”

Anakin took a deep breath tinged with smoke from the fire, and let it out in a bemused sigh. “Why do you care if I get hurt?”

“It’s difficult for me to not to feel a certain fondness for Isten’s… twin, as it were.”

“Weren’t you the one threatening to turn me in this morning?” Anakin said, pulling Obi-Wan’s borrowed cloak up a little more around the sleeping man.

“I would take no pleasure in it,” Veris said after a moment, neatly snapping a piece from the ration bar, “but I will do whatever I must for Isten’s sake. Just as you would do whatever it takes to protect Obi-Wan.”

Frowning, Anakin stroked Obi-Wan’s hair, the motion soothing him until he was able to put his feelings into words. “I can’t leave Obi-Wan alone in the war. So we’ll help you get off this planet.”

Anakin paused before he forced the rest of it out. He studied the way Obi-Wan’s hair glinted gold between his fingers, trying to talk himself into what he was about to say as much as he was Veris, “But when I turn myself in after the war, what will you have to hold over our heads? To stop me from telling the Council about the two of you?”

Veris chewed the piece of the ration bar thoughtfully, considering the question and the way Anakin had tucked Obi-Wan up against him. Swallowing, he shook his head. “You will never turn yourself in. Or you will leave him alone for the rest of his life.”

Anakin looked away, out into the shadows and starlight of the forest.

“And you don’t really think you deserve to be punished anyway, Anakin. I know you don’t.”

“Why?”

“Because Isten doesn’t.”

Anakin opened his mouth but Veris waved it away. A branch snapped in the fire, sending sparks drifting upward into the dark. “Please, Anakin. You don’t care about lofty ideals of morality. You never have.”

Veris folded the wrapper back down over what was left of the bar, the silver crackling as he set it next to Isten’s perfectly still form. “But when it comes to those you love, oh, you are a bloody, avenging god of old when those you love are hurt. And those barbarians murdered your mother. They deserved to die for what they did. Didn’t they, Anakin?”

“It… it wasn’t my right to kill them.”

“That’s the Jedi Knight of Coruscant talking, with his pretty robes and real showers and rules about bowing before duels in training halls,” Veris chided him, voice low and curious, almost lost against the dark forest behind him save the glow of his face from the flames. “What does the son of Tatooine say, the child of the endless dunes and the harsh suns?”

“That I’m done talking with you about this. Letting you try to pull me into this argument.”

An old Huttese saying came to mind, and Anakin muttered it to the fire, holding a hand out to its warmth while the other remained lying on Obi-Wan’s chest. “<When you let a devil deal the cards-->”

“<\--he wins every time.>” Veris finished in thoughtful approval, watching him. “Fair enough. But there is darkness in you, Anakin, and there always will be. You gain nothing by turning from yourself.”

“I’d rather fight the dark and suffer all my life than become a slave for even a minute.” Anakin gave Isten a pointed look, the Sith unaware of it in his trance, before coldly changing the subject. “I’ll take second watch.” _Isten. Wake me up next for watch._

A faint affirmative answer drifted to him in his own mental voice, an uncanny echo of his Force signature sparking around it.

“May we have our sabers back?” Veris asked with careful nonchalance, settling down atop the dark red of the borrowed cloak Anakin had given him back in the house. “At least one of them?”

“No. If there’s trouble, wake me up. Maybe then.” Annoyed and on edge, Anakin added, “Until then, they make a pretty good pillow with my cloak wrapped around them.”

Veris’s lip curled in a hint of a sneer and Anakin gave him a jaunty salute before shifting Obi-Wan onto his side and lying down beside him, feeling a petty satisfaction at Veris’s annoyance.

“Remember, like you said yourself, you need us to get off this planet and away without anyone noticing you. Don’t try anything stupid or all bets are off. You’ll both end up in the Temple Detention Center forever. If you’re lucky.”

“I wouldn’t dream of it, Knight Skywalker,” Veris answered with an empty smile and words so crisp it felt like frost stealing through the warmth of the fire. “Please do get your rest, and I hope that house eats you alive tomorrow.”

Anakin gave an exaggerated yawn and pretended not to hear, pulling the wrapped lightsabers under his head and draping his mechno-arm over Obi-Wan before nestling into his warmth and settling into a light sleep that was, for once, untroubled by dreams.

 

* * *

 

After waking up for an uneventful watch of his own, Anakin went back to sleep as Veris took over and did not stir again until after dawn.

The early morning calls of birds and a ray of weak morning light drifted across his face, nudging him back to reality, and he slowly became aware of someone talking to himself. The same polished, pleasant voice asked and answered itself from two different places.

It took Anakin a moment to think past his sore muscles from sleeping on the hard ground to place what was happening.

“None of us should go back there. I refuse to let Anakin go.”

“While I am also reluctant to let Isten go, the beacon is there, Obi-Wan. How do you propose we get it back?”

Anakin sat up to find Veris and Obi-Wan turning to look at him from where they sat under the shade of the neighboring tree, mirror images clad in black and ecru with dappled sunlight playing across their faces.

“You’re awake!” he smiled, pushing himself up and rubbing the sleep out of his eyes.

“I am,” Obi-Wan nodded back. “Tired but whole.”

“That’s debatable, given what he’s saying,” Veris remarked, raising an eyebrow. “Obi-Wan seems to think there is a magical way we can get the beacon without going into the house.”

Anakin picked up the wrapped bundle with their sabers and stretched his stiff legs, noticing Isten’s robe hung over the tree and wondering if he had gone off to the river. “Wait, you do, Obi-Wan?”

“No, I don’t. I say we leave the beacon where it is and follow the river. There has to be a settlement somewhere along it. This whole world can’t be uninhabited.”

“The locals certainly came running when you crashed, didn’t they?” Veris offered blandly.

“We are still alive despite the fact that thing, that creature, was strong enough to overtake a trained Jedi and nearly force… him… to violence against another,” he told Veris with a clear discomfort at the recollection.

Veris’s tone remained placid. “And even then Isten saved you. Did you know that?”

“Yes. He did. Twice. First in the room and then in the memory.” Obi-Wan bowed to Veris from where he sat, glancing over at Anakin’s stunned face. “I owe him. We owe him.”

Anakin sat down next to Obi-Wan and rubbed his own sore shoulder hard, the way he wanted to hug Obi-Wan but relief that he was alright warring with the knowledge Obi-Wan would not want such affection shown in front of enemies.

“Good morning, Anakin,” Veris nodded, pretending to notice Anakin for the first time. “Did you hear what Obi-Wan just said?”

“Stop it, Veris,” Obi-Wan sighed. “Listen to me. I believe the only reason we are still alive after that is that the creature is tied to the house or an artifact in it. It can’t come out here into the woods or it would have done so and we would all be dead. As long as we don’t go back we are safe from it.”

“How dangerous is it? Isten can’t remember anything clearly. What exactly happened in this memory the two of you saw?”

“It was controlling the people in the mansion. Making them kill themselves, and more than happy to watch them kill each other. I can’t remember all of the details myself, but it was angry with them. It kept calling them weak. Useless.”

Anakin frowned in the direction of the mansion, a new cold stealing through him. “Why didn’t we find any bodies?”

Obi-Wan shook his head and ran a hand through his hair. “I don’t know. But none of us are going there now that we know how dangerous it is.”

“Perhaps you have grown used to having your Padawan, sorry, former Padawan as your audience. I am not him,” Veris said, gesturing up toward the sky lost beyond the green overhead and voice now as cool as the ice in his eyes.

“We have no proof there is anyone else on this planet. No authorities came after your crash, no one local responded during the times the beacon was actually on and we have not seen so much as a satellite go by overhead at night. This whole planet or system could be owned by the same man that built the estate, for all we know. Just one giant nature preserve.”

“No, people would have come looking for him in that case. If he were that rich,” Anakin said, looking to a thoughtful Obi-Wan for agreement, but none came.

It was Veris’s turn to sigh as he voiced what Obi-Wan was thinking. “Oh, Anakin. When you get to the level of wealth he apparently had, judging by the estate, there are plenty of people in line who would love to see you just disappear one day. Maybe even vanish while on a ‘Force quest’ of some kind off at a private location no others were privy to. Some unknown place that would render a search terribly laborious and too expensive to continue for long.”

Anakin looked at Obi-Wan again but the thin line his mouth formed showed Veris was bringing up points for which he had no rebuttal. “What is your logic again?” Obi-Wan said to Anakin, turning toward him. “For what reasons would you and Isten be the ones to go?”

“You can’t. When all four of us were there, it chose you.” Anakin reached over and took Obi-Wan’s hand, squeezing it and lowering his voice. “It wasn’t your fault, Obi-Wan. It wasn’t.”

Obi-Wan looked away, pulling his hand free and running it over his beard. “It was,” he muttered before raising his voice to address them both. “And so I assume you, Veris, are excluded for the same reason?”

“Yes,” Veris nodded with reluctance, folding his arms.

Letting out a long, frustrated breath, Obi-Wan buried his face in his hands and spoke, the words muffled. “So by default it’s Isten and Anakin, then. Because no one should go alone?”

“Yeah. We’ll be ok, Master,” Anakin reassured him. “I mean, clearly Isten and I are too strong for it. It makes sense, you know. I’m supposed to be ‘The Chosen One’ and all that, and Isten’s, well, a copy of me. Even if he’s weaker than me and darker, he’s still probably stronger than both of you.”

Veris said nothing, gaze shifting between the two of them.

“This is not making me feel any better, Anakin,” Obi-Wan said from behind his hands before letting them slide back down into his lap and shaking his head in resignation. “Fine. Fine. But I want the datapads. The journals. I want to know more about whatever happened so we can best deal with that thing when the time comes. So we can get rid of whatever artifact it comes from permanently.”

“I’m thinking an aerial bombardment,” Anakin grumbled. “After we return to get you and Isten.”  

“For once, we agree,” Veris said, waving a greeting to Isten as he returned with another pile of kindling in his arms. “Did you hear, Isten? Anakin wants to bomb the estate after we all leave.”

“Why wait if we’re camping anyway? We could just burn the place down on our way out after we get the beacon,” Isten offered with a grin, setting the wood down and brushing his sleeves off before coming to sit down behind Veris, wrapping his arms around him from behind.

“Grab some supplies and equipment or whatever and then burn the whole karking place to the ground,” he continued over Veris’s shoulder, eyes a harsh gold in the scattered shadows cast by the trees overhead. “That place deserves it after whatever happened there, from the feeling it left me with.”

Anakin blinked at the audacity of the suggestion, wondering if this was what it felt like to be Obi-Wan dealing with him. He twisted his hands around the bundle of lightsabers in his lap. “No. Too much of a risk of the fire spreading to the rest of the woods with us in it.”

Isten shrugged as Veris leaned back into him, twining his own hands over and through his master’s. “Then let’s eat and get going. The faster we do this, the faster we all get out of here.”

 

* * *

 

The walk back was a quiet one, only the calls of birds and the sound of their boots crunching through dirt and leaves breaking the silence between them. The strip of blue sky between the trees crowding the path was clear and cool, the weather pleasant enough Isten had left his robe and Anakin his cloak back at the camp.

Isten, leading the way at Anakin’s terse gesture before they started, waited for a long while before he turned toward Anakin, walking backward so he could face him. “Can I have my saber?” At the Jedis’ discretion, Obi-Wan had kept his own and Veris’s while Anakin took his own and Isten’s.

“No. Only if something goes wrong.” Anakin’s eyes dropped to the wandering line of marks and bruises visible over his twin’s collar.

Now that he was real, Isten’s clothing was subject to the same tugs and pulls Anakin’s was, and the collars didn’t sit nearly as high or as neatly as they had when Anakin had first seen him.

Isten shrugged, not surprised at the refusal, and turned back around to talk to the path in front of them. “Ok.”

“Why did you let him do that to you?”

“What?” Isten turned back, taking relaxed backward steps again, and realized what Anakin was staring at. “Oh, these?” He smiled and reached up to tug his collars open to give him a better look.

“Didn’t it hurt?”

“Come on, Anakin. Like we’ve never had a hickey before.”

“Not like that. And don’t say ‘we’. You and I are not the same person.”

“Ok, how about Skybr-”

“No.”

Isten made a face. “Don’t be dumb, Anakin. Stop treating me like a threat.”

Kicking a rock out of the way, Anakin shook his head and gestured for Isten to turn back around. “You’re slowing us down walking like that.”

Isten did, but continued speaking over his shoulder, undeterred. “I want what you want. Yes, I love Master, but I want Obi-Wan safe, too. You heard Obi-Wan. I saved him.”

“And what about me? Do you want me safe?”

Isten considered this for a moment too long for Anakin to fully trust his reply. “You’re my twin. Why would I want to hurt my own twin?”

“Because you’re selfish, and jealous.”

“How do you know? Because you are?”

“Maybe. Or maybe I just know better than to trust a Sith.”

Isten slung his collar back a little, letting the drift of bruises across his neck tease Anakin. “You know, I didn’t answer you a minute ago. Do you want to know what it was like?” he asked the path ahead of them.

“He hurt you. That’s pretty clear.”

“Because I wanted him to. I let him do it. I let him claim me. And it felt so good. Don’t worry. It’ll feel good when Obi-Wan does it to you, too.”

Anakin opened his mouth to argue and closed it again, unable to respond and almost thankful when Isten casually changed the topic. “Almost there.” He pointed up to where the line of trees fell away to overgrown waves of flowers and vines and the dim shape of the house far beyond them.

They emerged into the gardens and stood side by side on the main path, the estate no different in its luxurious sprawl of decay but a charge in the air that hadn’t been there before. “The Force,” Isten murmured as Anakin nodded, both of them staring up at the mansion.

“Without the dark you can feel just how powerful the flows of it are here. They’re not distorted anymore.”

“Then why do I still not want to go in there?” Isten asked, giving an unconscious tap on his hip where his saber usually hung.

“Because you’re not stupid,” Anakin said absentmindedly, watching the distant windows and doors for any kind of movement. “Datapads or beacon first?”

“Datapads. And we stay together. No splitting up.” Isten folded his arms, scanning the second floor himself.

“Agreed. Datapads first. We can get more supplies out of the bedroom too.”

Neither said aloud what they were both thinking: they wanted to avoid the library as long as possible.

Despite the beautiful weather and the new, relative peace in the powerful tides of the Force around the mansion, they could still sense the library huddled in the center of it all like a huge, awful spider with its long legs patiently tucked up in the middle of its web.

Waiting.

Anakin clenched his jaw and stood up taller, one of his clones’ battle chants coming to him. For a moment, he missed Rex and his men so fiercely a fond smile grew as he sang the first line of the chant under his breath. “We asked command if we were done.”

Recognizing the words instantly, Isten grinned over at him as they set off through the lush ruins of the gardens toward the house. “They sent us out to have more fun.”

“So gear up, boys, it’s time to fight.”

They finished together, voices low as the mansion rose before them. “We’re all going to hell tonight.”

 

* * *

 

Stealing in through the gaping back door, Isten in the lead and Anakin behind with his own saber out but unlit, the two men made their way up to Obi-Wan and Anakin’s room. Out of habit, they avoided anything that would make noise, moving carefully around large shards of broken window glass and debris.

The bright sunlight pooled along the upper floor’s windows gave an almost dreamlike sheen to the hallway as they approached their bedroom, and Isten strode ahead after a moment of uncertainty. _Nothing is here,_ he told himself as he clenched his hand where his saber should be.

 _Of course not_ , came the immediate thought.

_Because it’s in the library._

Isten rounded the corner and stopped, holding up a hand to signal Anakin to come in.

The room was the same, it seemed, the sheets still a rumpled pile on the bed and the supplies they had hoarded a drift of packages and random equipment in the corner. Nothing looked out of place, and Isten took a cautious step in and then another toward the stack of screens on the floor by the window sill. “Anakin? Why don’t you get the supplies and I’ll get the datapads?”

“Ok. Let’s make this fast.”

He heard Anakin rustling behind him, tossing things into one of the bags they had found in their search of the house, and knelt down to start shifting the datapads into another sack.

As he grabbed the last one, the seventh according to the crude marks Obi-Wan had carved into the edge of each one, his bare hand triggered the datapad on.

It flicked through entries so fast the white screen flickered like a candle flame, and Isten traded it off to his gloved hand so his touch wouldn’t register on the primitive device. The scrolling slowed and then stopped on an entry that bore no date and had the same two Telladorian words repeated over and over again in stark black pixels down the bone-white page. _Casad eiun._

_Wait. I know what those symbols sound like?_

Isten closed his eyes, reaching out into the strange, dizzying haze that surrounded his link with Veris, that luscious and confusing sea of memories he and Veris had each inherited from both Anakin and Obi-Wan prior to their awakening. Obi-Wan could read Telladorian, and if Isten concentrated hard enough on that shared knowledge from what he starting to think of as Before, he wondered if he would be able to as well.

_“Casad”… it means… uh… “my love,” when speaking to that person. Yeah. That’s it. And “eiun”... is a particle or something like that that means “soon”._

_“Soon, my love.”_

Isten looked at the words repeating over and over again, typed until they blurred together and became unintelligible. _Soon, my love. Soon, my love. Soon, my--_

“Isten.”

He looked up, startled, to find Anakin slinging a bulky bag over his shoulder by the door. “What is it?”

“Nothing.” Isten clicked the screen off, deciding it would not make Anakin any more trusting if he admitted to being able to read something only Obi-Wan knew how to. “Just an entry that had a bunch of the same words repeated, it looks like.”

“Mark it. We’ll have Obi-Wan look at it first when we get back.”

He did and stuffed the device in the sack with the rest of them, happy to be rid of it. “Ready?”

“Yeah.”

 

* * *

 

“You know, this isn’t how I was hoping to get my saber back,” Isten muttered as they stood at the end of the long, dark hallway that led down into the silver-grey radiance of the library.

“Shut up and take it,” Anakin growled, holding the weapon out to him as he stared down the gloomy corridor.

Isten did without looking, his own eyes narrowed at what lay before them.

The six locked doors they had never been able to budge, three on each side of the hall, lay wide open, looming pits of black.

A musty smell hung in the air, quickly burned away by ozone as they both lit their sabers. Anakin glanced over at Isten, at the odd sight of his own face edged in harsh lines of red and blue. “Do you sense it here? Whatever it was that attacked Obi-Wan?”

Isten shook his head without taking his eyes off of the yawning doorways. There was none of the unnatural fog that had half-coalesced into the inhuman shape he had seen the day before. “No.”

“It’s two ballrooms, one on each side,” Anakin said, puzzled but knowing he was right the moment he spoke. “I saw one of them in a dream. There were people having a party there. Maybe the same ones you and Obi-Wan saw.”

An ominous silence followed, stretching out between them as the doors taunted them to pass.

“I swear to the Force if the beacon somehow got moved into one of these pitch-black rooms I am going to karking burn this place to the ground,” Isten swore before pointing his saber down toward the library in a sweep of ozone. “You hear that, Ugly? To. The. Ground.”

“Shut up, Isten.” Anakin hissed. “Where did you put it?”

“Behind the big relief in the middle of the room. There’s a door in the far back wall between some shelves that leads down somewhere. Maybe a storage room or something. I didn’t go in. I just opened it up and put it inside the door.”

Anakin spun his saber once, thinking. “Alright, we go back-to-back down the hall and then I’ll stand guard at the archway while you go get the beacon.”

“Sounds good to me. And hey,” Isten offered, gripping his saber tighter as they started down the hall, “Maybe the doors just popped open, some kind of wiring overload from the Force when Obi-Wan was having a seizure upstairs?”

“Yeah, could be,” Anakin whispered, neither of them believing it. _We get the beacon. We get to the woods. Whatever this thing is, it can have the house. It can have the whole karking place._

“Or this could be where all the bodies are that none of us have found?”

Anakin shot a furious look at Isten as they cleared the first pair of doors and the dim, misshapen forms lying inside too far back from the halo of their blades to identify.

“Sorry! Just thinking out loud.”

“Don’t.”

They passed the last two sets in the same agonizingly slow way, Anakin glaring into the dark of the doors on the side he faced and wondering if every motionless silhouette was rotted furniture or something worse.

When the ceiling finally swept upward into the graceful arch of the library and light returned, both of them let out a soft sigh of relief and quickly surveyed the room, casting frequent glances back at the hallway.

Like the bedroom, the library was just as they had left it, the plush chairs and tables and display cases neatly arranged around the room, the high windows glowing with daylight and dust, the black gemstone smoldering crimson where it sat on the table Anakin had woken up next to one night. The hooded woman in the center of the relief mounted in the center of the room smiled at them from over her stone garden, her face hidden save a gentle mouth expertly carved.

“Nothing out of place, it looks like.” Anakin said, wishing the dread he felt would disappear at the statement of that fact, but it remained, stubborn and deep.

“Yeah. Keep watch. I’ll go get the beacon.”

Anakin nodded and turned back to face the archway and the open doors, fighting the unease crawling through him at both the energy of the library and the fact he had put his back to a Sith armed with a lightsaber. _Focus on the hallway. On the doors. Isten won’t hurt me. He seems to do everything Veris says and Veris said he wouldn’t hurt us. For now, at least. Focus._

Anakin felt a hand slide onto his shoulder and looked back, both surprised Isten had crossed the room and come back so quickly and annoyed he had been so lost in thought he hadn’t heard Isten approach.

No one was there.

The library sat empty all around him, Isten nowhere to be seen.

“Isten!” Anakin shouted, whirling around with his saber up in a defensive slant, heart pounding. _Force, what was that?_ “Isten!”

“Here!” came the shout, the Sith rounding the corner of the relief on the far side of the library and holding up a familiar, clunky box in one hand and the red line of his saber in the other. “What is it?”

“Do you see it? Is it here?”

Isten hurried back over to him, readjusting the bag of datapads on his back. “I can’t tell as well in here. I mean, there’s no shape I can see anywhere, but the whole room feels weird. What happened?”

“Something… I felt a hand on me.”

“Are you alright?”

“Yeah. But we are leaving. Now.”

“That’s the best thing you’ve said all day.” Isten handed off the beacon to him with a grateful nod. “It’s been fun, Ugly!” he called back into the library as they left, without looking back lifting two fingers up over his shoulder in a rude gesture a young Anakin had learned on the streets of Mos Espa long ago.

Still rattled, Anakin said nothing at Isten’s obnoxious show of bravado, certain for a moment that if he turned back something would be watching him from the archway, something warped and grotesque. Something that would drive him mad to see.

“Let’s go.” Right behind Isten, Anakin tossed up his own hand in the same obscene gesture back toward the library, angry with himself for being afraid. But he couldn’t bring himself to even glance back as they made their way out of the silent mansion, and despite Isten’s jokes he noticed Isten couldn’t either.

 

* * *

 

“Obi-Wan?”

Obi-Wan sat motionless under one of the trees in the clearing, staring at the last smoldering embers of the fire from the night before as Veris tried to get his attention once again.

“Obi-Wan? You were saying? About the river?”

“We…” They had been talking about visiting the river to see how high it was after all of the rain and if it would still be safe enough to fish and bathe in. But now, out of nowhere, the only thing Obi-Wan could think of was Anakin. _Something has happened to him._

“I have a bad feeling about them. Anakin and Isten,” he told Veris in a half-daze, taken aback at how strong and nauseating the feeling was. _He’s been hurt._

_Or killed._

_Something horrible._

The color drained from Obi-Wan’s face and he stood, fumbling with the extra saber tucked into his belt as Veris rose as well, alarmed. “What are you talking about?”

“I don’t know. Here’s your saber.” He shoved the weapon into Veris’s hands and swallowed, the raw taste of fear bitter in his throat. “We’re going back there.”

 _No, no, I can’t have lost him. Not like this. Not here_ , he thought in the back of his mind as they crashed through the undergrowth back toward the main trail, Veris confused and grim as he followed behind.

The forest was as lovely as they had ever seen it, soft and green, cool in the shadows and warm in the sunlight. The thought Anakin could be lying dead or mortally wounded somewhere along the path, or back in the decadent ruins of the mansion, made Obi-Wan’s heart twist hard enough in his chest he found it hard to breathe.

_Please, Force. Please. I love him! I can’t lose him! Please. Please--_

Horrible images flashed by as his mind tried to reconcile the sharp, jagged fear that had overwhelmed him. Anakin lying still inside the mansion, the only movement his blood pooling out to soak into the faded patterns of one of the rugs. Anakin screaming for help as some animal they hadn’t seen before dragged him into the woods, claws deep in his chest. Anakin walking into the pond like that couple Obi-Wan dimly remembered seeing during his trance with Isten.

Anakin lost, dying, taken from him.

 _Anakin!_ he sent through their bond, cursing himself for not calling out sooner in his blind panic. _Anakin, where are you?_

 _Here!_ The trail curved gently to the right far up ahead, and two figures came into view, one waving.

Anakin and Isten.

Whole, unharmed, striding toward them on their long legs, neither of them limping, neither clutching a wound in that particular, slumped way Obi-Wan knew from his own injuries and his own soldiers. He watched them come closer, Anakin carrying the beacon and bags slung over both their shoulders, his hand sliding up over his mouth in relief so deep he was speechless.

 _Obi-Wan?_ Anakin asked, sensing his distress and jogging ahead of Isten. _What is it?_

Obi-Wan tried to walk calmly out to him, but his steps were a little too long and his fingers trembled as they landed on Anakin’s shoulders. “Are you alright? Are you hurt?”

“No,” Anakin said, glancing over Obi-Wan’s shoulder at Veris. “Are you alright? Why does he have his saber?”

Obi-Wan lifted his hands to cup Anakin’s face, cherishing every small detail: the fine line of his eyelashes, the faint color of the scar on the right side of his face, the warmth of his skin against Obi-Wan’s palms. “Thank the stars, you’re here.”

He tried to reassure himself by running his hands along Anakin’s shoulders and arms, but the bitter aftertaste of fear remained. “We were coming to help you two. I thought I’d lost you.”

Isten nodded a hello as he walked past to Veris, but Obi-Wan barely noticed he was there.

“Why would you think that?” Anakin smiled, clearly trying to reassure him, and love surged through Obi-Wan, simple and pure at the thought Anakin was just as worried about him. “Look, not a scratch on me. Other than this big one on the side of my face, but you know about that one.”

“It was just a feeling. I…” Obi-Wan shook his head, stepping back and reluctantly letting his hands fall away at the realization the two Sith were watching from a polite distance. “Perhaps I am still rattled by what happened to me.”

Anakin stepped forward and leaned down to rest his forehead against Obi-Wan’s, ignoring his faint murmur of protest. “Who cares if they see? Look. See? I’m fine.”

Obi-Wan closed his eyes and resisted the urge to hug Anakin tight against him. Anakin was so strong and vital and had absolutely no idea how precious he was, Obi-Wan thought. _Not the slightest._

Anakin’s spirit brushed against his, a quick pass of loving concern through the bond, and Obi-Wan let out a deep, tired breath.

Anakin felt like he always did. Raw and powerful, flows of light and dark intertwined, the latter setting Obi-Wan’s teeth on edge even as it reassured him Anakin was being honest with him for possibly the first time in his life. The dark was heavy and thick to Obi-Wan, something he dared not touch, but he acknowledged it and passed over it, sending his own energy toward the light swirling through Anakin’s soul. _I was so worried._

Anakin gave a gentle smile. _Sorry. I promise I’m ok._ And then a new feeling stole in alongside the fond words, his characteristic playfulness looking for a way back to easier emotions. _But, uh, if you want to check me over a little more thoroughly later on I wouldn’t mind._

“Anakin,” he whispered, still leaning against him and too relieved to even pretend to be annoyed. “You are terrible.”

“See? That’s how you know I’m ok.”

 

* * *

 

The morning drifted into afternoon as the four of them lost themselves in the small tasks of setting up a more permanent camp, Isten and Anakin sharing what had happened in the mansion as they worked together to dig out a firepit and collect stones to ring it once all of them had cleared away most of the underbrush in the clearing and cut out a more permanent path back out to the main trail. Veris and Obi-Wan listened as they sorted out supplies, Isten discreetly raising an eyebrow as the hand touching Anakin in the library became just a strange feeling in Anakin’s retelling.

Anakin gave Isten a meaningful look and muttered to him in the slave creole they shared as he crouched next to him with another heavy rock, pretending to drop it so that he would have a reason to curse. “<He’s worried enough. I’m fine.>”

“One more reason for us not to go back there. Any of us,” Veris declared once the story was done, lifting up a small bottle of liquid to the sunlight to examine it. “And until our rescuers come, as a show of good faith…”

He handed the bottle to Obi-Wan and reached down to unholster his own saber in a familiar click of metal and leather. “Here,” Veris said, holding the weapon out over the collection of supplies sitting on a cloak between the two men.

Isten blinked over at him, apparently as stunned as Obi-Wan and Anakin, and tilted his head to the side in a furious jerk of his chin as he sent something through the bond he shared with Veris.

“Thank you,” Obi-Wan said as diplomatically as he could, bowing from where he sat as he took the lightsaber and tucked it into the back of his own belt. “We will... not break your trust in us.”

Both Jedi sat stock still in the cool forest air as Anakin wondered what the two Sith were saying in the long silence that followed, especially when Isten’s head bowed and he reluctantly took out his own saber hilt.

He spun it once and offered it to Anakin, giving a stiff bow from where he sat across the firepit. “We mean you no harm.”

Anakin took it, exchanging surprised looks with Obi-Wan, and forced himself to say something as gracious as Obi-Wan had. “I’ll... keep it safe.”

“Thank you,” Isten answered, his own strained tone a mirror of Anakin’s.

“I think we should go see how the river has done in the recent rains,” Veris offered, standing up. “Are the fishing poles still there?”

Obi-Wan nodded, face perfectly neutral. “They should be. We tied them up against a bent tree near the path when you come out by the river.”

“Come, Isten. Let’s see if we can’t catch a better dinner than those Force-forsaken rations.”

Isten rose with a mulish frown, stalking past them all into the woods, but Veris only watched him go with a fond look that seemed out of place with the harsh color of his eyes before he set off behind him.

Obi-Wan and Anakin watched them go, waiting until they were out of sight before opening their own bond. _Was that some kind of trick?_ Anakin asked, inspecting Isten’s saber carefully before pushing the hard weight of it down into the back of his own belt.

_I don’t believe so. Veris is trying very hard to make the two of them seem less dangerous to us. He’ll happily give up power now to ensure their survival until later. That’s what I would do, anyway._

Anakin shrugged, watching the path they had disappeared down. “Isten sure didn’t seem to want to hand his over.”

“But he did, in the end. Veris’s word is absolute, it would seem.”

Shaking his head, Anakin lifted his chin and found a smile creeping across his face, a dawning and beautiful relief at the thought they were finally away from the unsettling ruins of the estate for good. “Don’t get any ideas,” he said in the best deadpan he could, studiously arranging the last of the rocks around the firepit.

Obi-Wan chuckled, the honest amusement making Anakin beam, and came over to sit next to him and help. “Ideas? Me?”

“Yeah. I see you sitting there thinking,” Anakin dropped into a passable imitation of Obi-Wan’s Coruscanti accent, “‘Oh, how lovely it would be if Anakin listened to _me_ all the time. How can I harness the evil powers of the dark side to make this possible?’”

“I don’t think I’d trade my soul for getting you to always listen to me.”

“You wouldn’t?”

“No. Now a real shower, and decent tea?”

It was Anakin’s turn to laugh. “A real shower and tea is worth more than the unyielding attention of your former Padawan?”

“He already listens to me.” Obi-Wan turned to him, a gentle smile on his face, grey-blue eyes intent on Anakin’s. “When it matters.”

“I, well, I want you to remember that next time you’re, uh, yelling about how I landed a ship,” Anakin said, teasing words failing under Obi-Wan’s steady, warm gaze. He was suddenly aware of how alone they were, of how close Obi-Wan was with his shoulder and leg brushing Anakin’s as they worked on the pit together.

Anakin cleared his throat and shifted his attention back to the rocks, moving some before changing his mind and moving them back while Obi-Wan watched. The affection and concern lacing their bond grew slowly between them, neither sure how to say what they wanted to say as the trees rustled overhead in late afternoon breezes.

Obi-Wan finally spoke as Anakin finished placing the last stone. “Please be careful, Anakin.”

“They’re not that heavy,” he tried to joke, suddenly unable to look up at Obi-Wan. He looked at the stones neatly arranged, at the rich brown of the dirt and the yellow leaf that had spiraled down to land inside the ring.

“You know what I mean.”

“Yeah, I know. But I’ll be ok. I always am.”

“Anakin.”

“What?” he said, stunned Obi-Wan was still so worried hours later about what had happened in the mansion.

“Do you understand how frightened I was when I thought you were in danger earlier today?” Obi-Wan whispered, cradling Anakin’s face in his hands once again. “Do you understand how much you mean to me?”

Anakin swallowed, throat dry, unable to think past how close they were and how tenderly Obi-Wan was touching him. “Is it the same you mean to me?”

“You said you loved me, back in the bedroom when we were arguing with Veris and Isten.” Obi-Wan closed his eyes before he continued. “Was that true?”

“Yeah. Of course.”

“Then it’s the same,” Obi-Wan whispered so quietly Anakin almost didn’t hear him over the pounding of his own heart.

Joy flooded through Anakin, so powerful through their bond Obi-Wan smiled in delight as he opened his eyes. He looked young at that moment, Anakin thought, in the golden glow of the woods with his face so close to Anakin’s, blue eyes soft with emotion.

_He loves me._

Obi-Wan knew him. Obi-Wan knew every awful truth about him.

_And he still loves me._

“If I told you to kiss me, would you listen?” Obi-Wan asked, stroking Anakin’s cheek as if he couldn’t believe he were there.

“Definitely,” Anakin smiled, bringing his hand up over Obi-Wan’s, almost shy for once in the face of the sweet desire singing through their bond.

“Then kiss me.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> So in life/health news, I am officially on the mend from my mystery illness (current theory is a burst ovarian cyst) but I might be very fatigued and off for anywhere from a few more weeks to a few more months as my body recovers. I'm a few weeks late on this update because of that, so I hope the length helped to make up for it.
> 
> What did you think? I'm still in comment purgatory but now that this chapter is done I might take a week or so just to answer them before I work on Ascension and this. 
> 
> Your comments, kudos, and support really made me smile during some of my rougher days in the past month and I am always so thankful for them! Thank you!


	13. Together

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Heads up that this chapter is NSFW! 
> 
> (And yes, the final chapter count has gone up by two again... plotting out and actually writing are two different things, I am still learning!)

The following two weeks saw the return of pleasantly warm weather and routines sprang up in the camp: just before dawn Veris or Obi-Wan, always the last to take watch, would rouse the other three, with middling success when it came to Anakin and Isten. While the pack animals they were concerned about had circled them at a great distance, they seemed to want nothing to do with the four men and by the seventh night keeping someone on watch was done more to satisfy battle habits than any real apparent need.

Anakin had not gone sleepwalking since they had left, and the beacon, checked every morning once they were all awake, ticked off its signal without interruption. Whether it was the unknown artifact in the house or Anakin’s own anxiety, the distance from the estate seemed to have settled his mind back down to the ever-present noise he had taught himself to deal with as best he could.

One pair would stay behind in the camp to meditate and practice forms while the other set off for a smaller clearing they had found nearby to do the same, returning to quietly eat together and tend to the camp until the morning sun rose high enough there was enough light filtering down through the trees to allow for foraging. The Jedi and Sith took turns on which set went to the river to fish instead, the rest of the morning passing into afternoon before they would meet up again.

After lunch Anakin and Isten fell into the habit of sparring with each other using branches rather than the sabers the Jedi still kept tucked into their belts, half out of boredom and half out of uncertain curiosity about the other. Obi-Wan and Veris usually sat with a datapad resting on a fallen log between them and did their best to translate the increasingly incomprehensible journal entries in tandem. To the crack of wood and the smooth tones of a mirrored Coruscanti accent, day would pass into dusk and one of them would make the campfire for the evening meal.

Conversation was not any more forthcoming at dinner than at the other times the four were together, the Jedi too cautious and the Sith too wary of angering them, but the silence between them all began to take on a strange, unexpected calm the more days that passed in peace between them.

But when Obi-Wan and Anakin were away from the Sith there was an entirely different feeling blooming between them. Among the lush greens of the forest, a delicate tension built with every sudden kiss Anakin would steal when they were alone and the gentle way Obi-Wan would sometimes lean against him when they sat together at the river watching their lines drift in the water.

In a way, such innocent gestures felt more intimate than their passion in the dark of the house weeks before, and Anakin smiled happily every time Obi-Wan’s own joy, so much like his own, passed through their bond at another rain of breathless kisses and caresses below leaves rustling overhead. _We are together. Nothing will happen to us because we are together._

He gave himself over to that calming sense of hope, careful to ignore the shadows the truth of their Sith twins cast over the situation, and found himself laughing over his shoulder at Obi-Wan’s teasing words one particularly warm morning as he stripped off his shirt and strode barefoot toward the river for a swim.

“Anakin, you’re going to frighten away all the fish if we bathe first,” Obi-Wan pointed out without any real anger in his voice as he followed him, setting their fishing poles with a clack against one of the trees next to the path that opened up onto the smooth, rolling green of the bank.

“I don’t think I’m that bad looking,” Anakin declared, turning toward him and running a hand through his hair as he tossed the thin cloth of his undertunic aside. “What do you think?”

Obi-Wan smiled. “I believe your handsomeness will not be recognized by the fish.”

Anakin shrugged, the fine line of his shoulders shifting. “How about you?”

“I…” Obi-Wan closed his eyes, breathing in the crisp scent of the evergreens around them, listening to the happy rush of the river before them. It was a beautiful morning, and it sang to him, through him, of the richness of life all around him. “I might need to see more,” he grinned, opening his eyes to Anakin’s amused snort.

“Oh, I see.” Anakin turned back toward the river, and stripped his belt and then glove off, shifting his mechno-arm in front of him to keep it out of sight. Obi-Wan did not mind, not expecting anything else, and sent a teasing approval through their bond as Anakin undid his pants and let them fall to his ankles.

Stepping out of them, Anakin strolled to the water, enjoying the heat of Obi-Wan’s gaze on him as the cool river slid up and gradually over the firm muscles of his calves and thighs and hips. He felt almost giddy at the attention, and turned halfway back toward the bank, leaving his arm tucked at his side out of habit. “You coming?”

“Perhaps.” Obi-Wan walked to the sloping edge of the shore and Anakin moved back into the water until it came up to his shoulders.

“Come on,” Anakin laughed. “I promise it’s not that cold today.”

Obi-Wan pretended to consider Anakin’s words though he already knew what he would do. There was no way to deny Anakin, not with the river bright in his eyes and scattered gleaming across his shoulders, not with the sky soaring blue and unsullied above the woods behind him. _Oh, beautiful boy, don’t you already know I am yours?_ , Obi-Wan wanted to ask, but instead began to disrobe one careful movement at a time as Anakin beamed at getting his way and let himself fall back with a splash into the brisk embrace of the water.

When he came back up, pushing wet curls back from his eyes, Obi-Wan was stepping down into the river toward him, lazy waves swirling against his lean waist as he chuckled and slapped a spray of water at Anakin. “‘Not cold’? Really, Anakin?”

“Not _that_ cold,” Anakin clarified, sinking down to his chin in the current, wavy locks trailing out next to him. “See?”

“No.”

“Come closer.”

“How stupid do I look?”

Anakin paused to think of an appropriately witty remark, still trying to put one together when Obi-Wan leaped on him. Dunking Anakin under the water with a triumphant cry, his victory lasted for just a second before Anakin shot back up to tackle him in a wild splash.

They wrestled and sloshed back and forth in the river, laughing between spitting out sudden mouthfuls of water, Anakin lifting and tossing Obi-Wan back into the waves one moment and Obi-Wan twining his leg around Anakin’s underwater to yank his feet out from under him next.

There were no sabers, no Temple robes, no Sith, no reminders of the scars they bore in mind as well as body. The river swept it all away in cool whirls of current, leaving only the moment and the two men sharing it.

Their bond shimmered pure and golden between them as they grappled and pushed and pulled each other through swirling waves, so full of joy the rough-housing gradually melted into caresses and the playful shouts kisses.

“Do… do you want to?” Anakin whispered as they pulled back from a long, lazy embrace, the desire clear in his tone sending a shiver through Obi-Wan that had nothing to do with the cold water they stood in. “We’re not due back for a couple of hours, and… I was thinking… if you wanted to...”

Obi-Wan studied Anakin for a while before he nodded, taking the warm hand Anakin offered and giving it a reassuring squeeze before turning to head to shore.

It was Anakin’s turn to admire him as they rose from the water and Obi-Wan felt with his own flush the ghost of Anakin’s attraction through their bond. He had never considered his own body anything but a tool, despite the approving looks he knew he sometimes earned from others, but Anakin’s attraction was different. It was so intense, and so personal, it made him feel almost shy, like he was a teenager again.

Others looked and saw a Jedi, a mysterious figure easily idealized, blue-grey eyes sharp in the shadows of a hood.

But Anakin looked and saw him in a way that no one else could. A battle brother, a best friend, someone who knew everything about him and still wanted Obi-Wan more than he had any way of explaining.  

Obi-Wan pulled him down with a long, affectionate kiss, letting Anakin lie atop him at first before gently rolling over to pin him on his back. The sun shone hot against his back, warm as the hard, lovely weight of Anakin’s body lying beneath him in the grass, warm as Anakin’s soft, seeking mouth pressed to his.

Lying tangled and naked together in the open air after all of their shy, secret encounters gave every touch new, intoxicating power and for a while they both drifted in a delicious haze, hands slow and lips greedy as they drank in the heat and light of the other.

Anakin let out a sigh when Obi-Wan finally sat back, admiring the lean, compact beauty of the older man’s chest and shoulders and the fresh marks Anakin himself had left along them. They burned low and sweet, Anakin knew, just as the ones Obi-Wan had scattered down his chest all the way to his hip did.

The faint bruises glowed in a subtle counterpoint to the brazen, beautiful lust pooled between his hips, his cock proud and stiff as Obi-Wan stroked it with just enough pressure to make Anakin gasp.

“You are perfect, Anakin,” Obi-Wan murmured, gaze lowering to Anakin’s hips and blond eyelashes light against his skin, his own erection lying hot and teasing against Anakin’s thigh. “How can you be so perfect?”

Anakin gave a happy whimper, feeling bold and confident, and pushed his hips upward into Obi-Wan’s hand, rolling his head to the side in dazed ecstasy.

His metal arm shone in the sunlight, harsh onyx lines traced in gold, and he froze in place at the realization of how out in the open it was. _Oh, no, no…_

“Anakin?” Obi-Wan asked, letting go of Anakin to cup his hip instead at the new tension that flared through Anakin’s body and into their bond. “Are you alright?”

“I just… I…” Anakin rolled onto his stomach, pulling his mechno-arm under him and muttering to the grass, hating the cool, dead weight beneath him. “Could I have my glove? Please?”

Obi-Wan drew breath to speak, and Anakin closed his eyes, silently willing Obi-Wan to not argue with him. _Please_ , he wished, and for a moment he could feel Obi-Wan’s love and concern for him swelling into frustration that Anakin did not see himself the way Obi-Wan did before it suddenly disappeared into long-practiced patience.

“Well, I do need to get something from my clothes,” Obi-Wan offered as he ran his hand down to rest in the small of Anakin’s back, flicking his other hand out.

Anakin felt the Force shiver and watched his glove and Obi-Wan’s belt drag themselves across the grass to them from the pile of clothes a little further up the bank.

“What do you need from your clothes?” Anakin asked as nonchalantly as he could, gratefully snatching up his glove and rolling onto his side to put his back to Obi-Wan while he tugged the leather on and closed the snaps.

“Oh, something important,” Obi-Wan said in a playful tone.

“What?” Anakin lay back down, feeling better already with the familiar tightness of the glove on his arm, to find Obi-Wan digging through one of the pockets on his belt.

“‘Sea or sky, both need a little help.’”

Anakin blushed all the way down his throat in a wave of pink at the Coruscanti slang and the understanding of what Obi-Wan meant when he held up a small, shatterproof vial of bacta. “Oh.”

“Speaking of which, ‘sea or sky’, dear one?” Obi-Wan asked, and Anakin saw there was no mockery in his inviting tone: the awkward moment had already been forgotten.

For a second, Anakin was as grateful as he was anxious, body eager to return to more pleasurable things.

“I… uh… I want to be ‘sea’? I mean, I want to, but I’ve never actually gotten that far with, um, with another man.” His blush deepened at the way Obi-Wan’s eyebrow raised in subtle approval, his flagging erection returning with new intensity at finally admitting out loud what he had fantasized about for so long. “What about you?”

“I prefer being ‘sky’ myself.” Obi-Wan let out a soft, pleased sigh and ran a thoughtful finger along Anakin’s collarbone. “I’ve wondered the last week or so which one you prefer, if we were to take things this far. I must say I’m happy if a little surprised to hear you say ‘sea’.”

“I trust you,” Anakin said, his blue eyes locked on Obi-Wan’s as he reached up to trace his hand along Obi-Wan’s arm. “I already trust you with my life. I want to trust you with… with me, I guess? If that makes sense?”

Obi-Wan swallowed, fighting down a fresh wave of lust at the sight of Anakin sprawled naked on the grass paired with the quiet uncertainty in his voice. _Careful, oh I must be careful with him._ “It does. Are you sure you want to do this now, Anakin? I don’t want to hurt you and if it’s your first time…”

“It’ll feel good by the end of it, won’t it?”

“Well, I hope so. Yes. That’s one way to put it,” Obi-Wan admitted, chuckling at the way Anakin bit his lip as he watched Obi-Wan’s face nervously from where he lay on the ground. “Are you so worried I’m going to tell you ‘no’?”

“I just want you. I want this. Before we’re separated for who knows how long.” Anakin sat up, crawling into Obi-Wan’s lap to tease a few more kisses from him, his taut thighs spread over Obi-Wan’s hips and his hands drifting down to play with the both of them. “Please?”

“Anakin…” The trace of cool dampness from Anakin’s hair as he nuzzled against Obi-Wan’s throat, the sharpness of his teeth on his skin, the hesitant way Anakin wrapped his hand around Obi-Wan’s cock: it took a concerted effort to speak past the pleasure washing over him. “We’ll have to go slow.”

“I can go slow.”

“Alright.” Obi-Wan shifted Anakin’s gloved, heavier hand up to rest on Obi-Wan’s shoulder, and then reached for the vial forgotten next to them on the bank.

“Well,” Obi-Wan whispered, pouring some of the bluish liquid into his own palm, “if you want to play, let’s start by having you play with yourself. Here.” Obi-Wan slid his other hand back around to cup Anakin’s ass, giving an encouraging squeeze. “Have you done that before?”

“... Yes.” Anakin’s arousal and embarrassment sparked at the same time in the Force, but he reached down and ran his fingers through the cold bacta.

“Then show me.”

Anakin closed his eyes, breaths coming hot and fast as he reached back with slick fingers, dragging them along the lean muscles of his side and the hard ridge of his hip bone. Obi-Wan’s other hand followed, leaving its own wet trail as he grabbed Anakin’s ass.

“Show me, Anakin…” Obi-Wan calmly repeated, his beard brushing the sensitive marks on Anakin’s chest as he pulled him closer.

Anakin said nothing, gloved hand gripping Obi-Wan’s bare shoulder tighter as he started to trace the sensitive line that circled the most secret part of him. This was so different from the vague, furtive fantasies that he’d entertained alone in barracks showers or in the narrow confines of his room. “Obi-Wan...”

He was naked on a riverbank, completely exposed with his back arched to present his chest and stomach to the greedy mouth and tongue of his lover and his ass forced back into the hands tightly gripping it. It was both thrilling and terrifying to be so vulnerable, and Anakin swallowed as he looked down at Obi-Wan and back up to the sky above.

The dancing waves of leaves rising up behind Obi-Wan, the low rumble of the river behind him, the wet, blunt euphoria of his own touch as Anakin continued to explore himself while Obi-Wan left sucking kiss after kiss along his skin: a hundred luscious sensations fell on and through Anakin until his words finally gave way to inarticulate cries and his body to the building pressure of his fingers.

Time had passed, time had stopped, time shot forward, time would never start again. _Oh, so good, it feels so good, Obi-Wan, I want more, I want you…_

Obi-Wan heard Anakin’s nervous, excited plea through the bond and returned it with soothing, pleased waves of his own delight as they wordlessly shifted. Anakin rolled off of Obi-Wan to lie down on his stomach, the blades of grass cool and smooth against his erection as he propped himself up on his gloved arm and worked deeper and harder into himself, knees bending just enough to push the pretty curve of his ass up into the air. He wanted to show himself to his lover even as he hid his face in the crook of his mechno-arm, gasping in the scent of leather and crushed grass as he played with himself.

Entranced, Obi-Wan reached out to let his calloused hand trail down Anakin’s hip. “Oh, Anakin…” He was tempted as much by Anakin’s shy, blossoming trust singing through the bond as he was the lewd sight of Anakin’s lovely body bared so completely before him.

“Please… please…”

Unable to wait any longer, Obi-Wan rubbed more of the bacta onto his own hands and gently let his fingers trace along the swell of Anakin’s ass, drawing a happy sigh and then hiss of surprise as he sank a finger into Anakin. “Don’t stop,” he murmured, leaning over Anakin and keeping his voice as steady as he could manage. “Keep going, and I’ll add as you take away, until it’s only me inside you. A little at a time, nice and slow. How does that sound, dear one?”

“Yes, I… ah… where did you learn all this?” Anakin groaned, metal hand clenched against the ground, aware in a dizzying halo of pain-edged pleasure of Obi-Wan’s finger sliding against his inside himself.

“Bacta’s an old Padawan trick,” Obi-Wan grinned against Anakin’s shoulder, words shallow and teasing puffs of warm air against his neck. “The rest is all practice.”

“I… I didn’t know that when I was a Padawan,” Anakin tried to joke, the words trailing off into a satisfied whimper at Obi-Wan’s careful touches.

Obi-Wan licked his lips, trying to stay focused enough to speak as Anakin’s body shivered below and around him. “Good,” he teased him. “You made enough trouble as it was.”

“Still do,” Anakin laughed, breathless, and shoved his ass back onto Obi-Wan’s fingers, sliding his own free. He had intended to tease Obi-Wan in return, feeling the older man’s intent gaze on him, but the motion pushed him deeper than Anakin had planned and he let out a cry at the jolt of pain that lanced through him.

“Shh, shh…” Obi-Wan soothed him, pulling back immediately and rolling Anakin over onto his back. “Are you alright?” he asked, the lust in his blue-grey eyes tinged with concern.

“Yeah, sorry, I just…” The pain faded as quickly as it had come, and Anakin gave an embarrassed shrug and turned his head to the side, worried he had overreacted. “I’m fine.”

“It’s alright. Slow, like I said.” Obi-Wan put both hands on the short grass on either side of Anakin’s head and waited until Anakin shyly turned back toward him. Giving him a tender, reassuring smile, Obi-Wan lowered his face until their foreheads touched. “Let me take care of you. Please?”

Anakin sighed in relief at Obi-Wan’s words, sinking into the heat of Obi-Wan’s halo in the Force as he did into his embrace, the two of them returning to simple and playful affection until they relaxed enough to find their way back to the pleasant, growing tension of before.

Obi-Wan finally pulled back from Anakin’s embrace to savor the breathtaking sight before him: Anakin wantonly sprawled on his back, begging him with his slender hips and quiet moans and stiff, pink cock lying heavy against his stomach. It took all Obi-Wan’s willpower to remember to fumble with the vial one last time, though he enjoyed the way Anakin stared hungrily as he rubbed more bacta, cool and glistening, along the length of himself. “Is this what you want, Anakin?”

“Please,” Anakin’s hands curled tight at his sides in the grass, one tanned skin and one creaking leather. “Please.”

Obi-Wan leaned forward, slipping a hand along Anakin’s smooth thigh, loving how eagerly Anakin opened up for him as he pressed the head of his cock against the perfect, slick heat of him. “Just relax, dear one,” he said, breath hitching as he started to push inside.

Anakin whined as stars shot across his vision, back arching at the thick, heavy weight stretching him wide. The pain almost overwhelmed him, and then he heard Obi-Wan whisper something between clenched teeth as he worked into him, something that washed bitter, beautiful ecstasy over it all.

“There, ah, there... Such… such a good boy for me, aren’t you?”

Anakin mewled, melting against Obi-Wan, hands fluttering to drag down his chest as he wrapped his legs around him. There was no time, no higher thought left to remind him of where he had first heard that phrase. There was only need, the need to have Obi-Wan deeper inside him, the need to be the center of his lover’s attention, the need to hear that praise again.

Obi-Wan bit his lip and forced himself to remain still, to let Anakin tighten his legs around him and push his hips up against Obi-Wan’s as slowly as he wanted to. Little by little Obi-Wan began to respond, to move with him, until they found their rhythm and he sank all the way into Anakin with a hoarse growl matched by Anakin’s own rasping cry as love flooded the bond between them.

“So good, you feel so good...” Anakin managed to gasp, lifting his face up just enough to steal a delirious kiss before falling back against the ground with his hair a halo of curls around his face. “Don’t stop, more...” Words failed and his pleas echoed through the Force instead, incoherent and sweetly filthy.

Obi-Wan ground his hips against Anakin, lost in the tight heat of him, and let his hand fall to wrap around Anakin’s straining erection, bringing weak cries from the younger man.

“Stars, look at you,” Obi-Wan murmured as he stroked Anakin with one hand and grabbed his shoulder with the other to steady him. He slid his fingers up and down, rubbing along the wetness tracing the smooth, swollen tip before sinking back down to tighten around the shaft.

Anakin could only stare up at him, unable to speak, and Obi-Wan thrust into him again, taking a fierce pleasure in rendering him wordless. His own lust was reaching its limits, threatening to spill hot and dark across the bond and into their lovemaking like a summer storm rolling in, Anakin welcoming it with new, loud moans.

 _He’s inside me, so deep, it feels so good_ _how can anything feel this good?_ Anakin wrapped his legs tighter around Obi-Wan, scrabbling at the grass for purchase to push himself onto Obi-Wan even more. Amidst the searing pressure of Obi-Wan’s hand stroking him in time to the increasingly rough thrusts of his hips, Anakin tried to place a new, strange joy welling up inside him.

 _It’s--_ Anakin was suddenly aware of every fine detail around him as a particularly hard jerk of Obi-Wan’s hips knocked another cry loose. The cold weight of his half-dry hair against the back of his neck, the desire darkening Obi-Wan’s eyes, the harsh, gasping breaths burning in Anakin’s throat, the maddening feeling of Obi-Wan’s cock driving inside him again and again.

_It’s all gone quiet._

He tried to speak, but only whimpers came out and the moment was gone as soon as he had recognized it, lost in a powerful crest of desire that surged back through him and sent a warm, stuttering spray of cum across his stomach and down Obi-Wan’s fingers.

In the shuddering orgasm that followed, he could only moan Obi-Wan’s name as he reached up to pull him down tight against him, trembling as Obi-Wan groaned against his throat and pinned him to the ground with the final desperate thrusts of his own release.

“Anakin, Anakin…” he hissed, raw need for him clear and beautiful.

Anakin writhed under him, staring in wide-eyed, drunken pleasure across the bank at the silver lace of the river’s waves as Obi-Wan rutted against him in breathless gasps. He couldn’t move, couldn’t think, couldn’t do anything but take the last of his lover’s desire even as it pooled and dribbled out of him in hot, sticky lines down his skin.

Luxuriating in the weight of Obi-Wan slowly collapsing atop him, Anakin hugged him close and buried his nose in Obi-Wan’s throat, breathing in his sweat and scent as Obi-Wan did the same.

The two marveled in exhausted wonder at the pounding of their hearts and the earthy musk of their lovemaking, bodies and minds twined in utter contentment under the sapphire reaches of the late morning sky.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Finally, boys! It only took, what, 13 chapters? What did you think?
> 
> And five chapters to go! Thanks as always for your comments and support! <3 <3 <3 I hope everyone has a Happy New Year and a wonderful 2018!


	14. Secrets

While Anakin and Obi-Wan lay breathless and content along the grassy riverbank, back at their campsite Veris dreamed. He was dozing against one of the larger tree trunks in the clearing, Isten also asleep and tucked up against him after a lazy morning spent foraging in the woods.

_He stood hand in hand with Isten atop a platform in an airy, expansive stone chamber. Marble flooring stretched out like a sea from the dais they stood on, ending in walls lined with narrow, finely carved windows draped in colorful banners. As the wind blew in, the banners swayed and the unknown writing lacing them drifted like long, curling lines of smoke._

Where are we?, _he asked Isten, curious, and when Isten gave no reply he turned to find Isten’s eyes closed. Isten was asleep on his feet, swaying gently and his hand limp in Veris’s. Veris smiled at the pretty, relaxed line of Isten’s mouth, taking a step forward to draw Isten into his arms before he fell over._

_His boot crunched on something rigid, his weight snapping something hard and brittle, and Veris glanced down to find a drift of bones sharp and bare all around them._

_Horrified, he pulled Isten against him as his gaze followed the heap of bones down the steps onto the pristine floor, the loose remains of dozens of bodies marked by skulls with moldering hair and unfamiliar clothes as faded as he now saw the banners along the windows to be._

_“Master?”_

_Veris blinked in confusion: despite the firm weight in his arms, Isten somehow stood before the dais, down amid the corpses, face upturned and almost unrecognizable for the ghastly pallor it bore._

_“You let it kill me, Master. Why did you let it kill me?”_

_He froze, unable to look away from Isten’s somber eyes and pale lips as the thing in his arms began to stir._

Veris woke with a start, the nightmare scraped to tatters by the rush of daylight and the solid weight of the tree against his back and Isten warm against his chest. They were alone at the campsite, and for a moment Veris fought a sudden, horrible fear that the thing in his nightmare had followed him out, that what lay against him was something other than his lover.

He studied the top of his Isten’s head, the way the light sparked fire in the waves of his hair, fighting down the racing of his heart. _Isten?_ he murmured through their bond, body tensing at the thought of what might look up at him instead of the younger man.

 _Mmm… yeah?_ came the answer, fuzzy and haloed in the rich streak of the dark that crowned Isten’s aura, and Veris’s apprehension drained away into relief.

 _I… are you all right?_ Veris asked, carding his hand through Isten’s hair to soothe himself as Isten lazily stretched up into his touch.

 _Yeah. What’s wrong, Master?_ Isten sat up, face flushed with sleep and golden eyes hazy.

“I had a nightmare. About,” Veris swallowed, brushing hair out of Isten’s face as gently as he could, “about you dying.” _He’s fine. No one has hurt him. He’s fine_ , he repeated to himself.

“I’m right here,” Isten said, puzzled at Veris’s concern, leaning back in to nuzzle against his throat. “It’s ok, Master. See?”

Veris nodded, running his hands in firm strokes up and down Isten’s back until the worst of the nightmare faded into vague unease, recalling Obi-Wan’s panicked, irrational flight back toward the estate the day Anakin and Isten had gone to get the beacon. “Isten, have you had any strange dreams, or feelings, since we left the house?”

“No,” Isten yawned against his chest, slipping his hands into the folds of Veris’s tunic and curling them tight.

“Are you sure, dear one?” Veris murmured into his hair, leaving a kiss amid the soft locks. “Nothing?”

Isten shook his head, already starting to doze back off, and Veris frowned out across the clearing: the awful memory of Isten’s bloodless face lingered over the crisp scent of the woods and the dappled sunlight streaming down from the canopy far overhead. _Isten?_

_Yeah?_

_Let me inside, beautiful boy. I want to make sure everything is alright._

_Yes, Master._

There was a pull across Veris’s mind, the opening of the bond from Isten’s side, and warmth spilled in alongside the black smolder of Isten’s soul. Veris smiled with both affection and relief at the familiarity of him, of the sense of coming home. It was so easy to lose himself in Isten’s purity of emotion and the radiance of the dark glowing within him that Veris had to remind himself to stay focused and observant as he sank deeper into the bond.

They had been one, in that timeless dream they had half-lived before they had awoken in the library separate from both the Jedi and each other, and Veris was reassured by just how much Isten felt the same all these days later.

He was beginning to change in small ways, just as Veris knew he himself was, the two of them moving into their own identities as people rather than mindless reflections.

But at the same time, while they were no longer simple mirrors of Anakin and Obi-Wan, Veris was certain the essence of them would always remain true to how they had begun. And here in the clearing, Isten’s darkness was the same it had been the morning they had found themselves awake and alive in the library, comforting to Veris despite the feeling it could tip into chaos at any moment.

Veris began to withdraw his consciousness back into himself, satisfied by what he had found, when Isten shifted against him. _Master?_

_Yes?_

One last, lazy thought rose before Isten slipped back away into sleep. _Not me, but Anakin…_ the words faded into the dull outlines of a half-forgotten memory, that of Anakin wide-eyed in the library, shouting for Isten. _Said he felt... a hand on him._

 

* * *

 

The rest of the day passed in awed bliss for Anakin as he and Obi-Wan went about the usual routine: while the noise in his soul had returned, all he could think about was their lovemaking and the tender silence in which he and Obi-Wan had bathed each other before dressing and managing to catch just enough fish to bring back to camp.

_I can’t believe that happened._

He even smiled at Isten dozing in Veris’s lap when they got back, too pleased to find his usual disdain for the Sith, but Veris only gave him a hard, considering stare as his fingers drifted through Isten’s hair. Anakin hoped he wasn’t blushing as he gave him a polite nod and hurried to crouch next to Obi-Wan by the cookfire and get the embers going once again.

The Jedi passed the day the same as any other, not speaking aloud of what had happened or outwardly showing any more affection in front of the Sith, but their bond glimmered bright every time they caught each other’s eye.

If Veris suspected what had happened he said nothing about it, and by the time Anakin settled in for that night, facing the fire with his arm draped over Obi-Wan, he had forgotten the guarded look Veris had given him.

He was half-asleep, lulled by the crackle of the fire and Obi-Wan’s chest rising and falling under his gloved hand, when Isten whispered something to him from where he sat hooded across the fire on watch duty.

 _Huh?_ Anakin wondered, lifting his hand and giving the battle sign for “Repeat orders?” as he glanced around. Veris was nowhere to be seen, and Obi-Wan slumbered on, motionless against Anakin’s chest. _Did Isten sense something near us?_

Isten pulled his hood down and mouthed the words again in what seemed to be an attempt to avoid communicating through the Force. “Master wants to see you.”

“Right now?” Anakin murmured, sitting up with deliberate slowness so as not to wake Obi-Wan. “Did you sense something coming toward us?”

Isten shook his head, golden eyes catching the fire as he looked off in what Anakin assumed was Veris’s direction.

“Then I’m not getting up.”

“I think it’s about Ugly. He didn’t want to talk about it with Obi-Wan awake.”

“Kajj,” Anakin muttered in clone slang, stifling a yawn. _It wasn’t his fault, but Obi-Wan still feels so guilty about that._ “Fine. Where is he?”

“Back along the path toward the main trail. Just out of sight from here, it feels like.”

“If this is some kind of trick, Isten--”

“I promise it’s not. I don’t know what he wants either,” Isten said with an unhappy wave toward the roughly-cut path.

Anakin rolled his eyes and cautiously shifted away from Obi-Wan before getting up.

The fire cast weak shimmers of reds and oranges on the nearest tree trunks and branches, and he turned away from it and let his eyes adjust to the dark as well as they could, like Isten trying to avoid using the Force as much as possible for fear of accidentally waking Obi-Wan. Pulling on his boots over his pants, he wrapped the single undertunic he now wore a little tighter over his chest and set off into the utter blackness with no idea of how far he had to go.

One of the many things that bothered Anakin about their Sith twins was that he could not feel them in the Force unless he was right next to them. He and Obi-Wan had realized that disconcerting fact soon after they had retreated to the outdoors from the relatively narrow confines of the mansion. While the Sith seemed generally aware of what direction the Jedi were in no matter the distance, Anakin and Obi-Wan could not sense the two of them unless they were almost within arm’s reach.

Obi-Wan’s theory on the bizarre phenomenon was that, in a way, it was like trying to sense a part of yourself. How could a drop of water tell one half of itself from the other?

It hadn’t made either Anakin or Obi-Wan any more comfortable with the situation, but the idea seemed logical enough. Anakin frowned, thinking about it, as he blindly walked forward, hands out to drag along the tips of branches off to either side to keep him from wandering off the path. _I won’t be able to feel him until I’m right on top of him._

The long shadows and bitter smoke of the campfire fell away bit by bit until there was only darkness below and starlight overhead, one night bird calling to another far above in the trees. His eyes now fully adjusted to the lack of light, Anakin saw the outline of a person waiting for him further ahead in the gloom, familiar in the proud line of his shoulders and the straightness of his back.

_Veris._

And sure enough, as Anakin approached, the figure took on a halo in the Force, a brittle ring of ice and obsidian. “What do you want?” he muttered to Veris’s nodded greeting, stopping before him to the crunch of dry leaves.

“Tell me about the library, Anakin,” Veris answered calmly, face hidden in shadow and voice low.

“What about it?”

“Tell me about the hand that grabbed you.”

A moment of confusion passed before anger overwhelmed it. “Kark you. What, did Isten tell you about that?” Anakin hissed, fists clenching at his sides. _That? That is going to come up? Now?_

“Have you had any strange dreams or feelings since we left the house?”

“No. I haven’t.”

“Good. But I want to check anyway, just to make sure nothing is wrong with you.”

“How are you going to do that?”

“You and I touched minds for the first time just before we left the estate. We’ll do it again to make sure you feel the same to me, but on a deeper level this time.”

Before Anakin could draw breath to argue, Veris added with cool thoughtfulness, “Or I could tell Obi-Wan that you kept this from him. You did keep it from him, didn’t you?”

“I-- I didn’t want him to worry!”

“Of course you didn’t. Now come here so that we can make absolutely sure he would have no reason to worry.”

“No.”

Veris seemed unsurprised, tone remaining as casual as if he were discussing the weather. “Obi-Wan or me, Anakin. Who would you rather have knowing about this? Who would you rather have staring your innate darkness in the face?”

 _I should go back. I should turn around and walk back and tell Obi-Wan first thing in the morning so Veris has nothing to use against me._ But dismay had already begun to creep into Anakin, stealing away the happiness of the day that had lingered like the dusk of a summer evening.

 _After this morning, things have been so good. If Obi-Wan finds out I kept this from him, he’ll be furious. It’s nothing anyway. I know there’s nothing wrong with me!_ _Nothing worse than usual._

He folded his arms and glared at the Sith, considering his options. _So what if I let Veris inside my mind, just a little? I’m stronger than him in the Force and he’s probably just worried about Isten’s safety. That’s what this is really about. Whether or not I’m dangerous to him, and therefore Isten. I show him I’m safe and he’ll leave me alone._

Anakin sighed and rubbed his forehead, already imagining the payback he was going to give Isten in their sparring match the next day. “If I do this, we never speak of it again?”

“Never. Now come here, stubborn boy.” Veris held his arms out, a silhouette shifting in the moonlight, and Anakin stepped forward into the cool touch of the Sith’s hands on his face.

 

* * *

 

 _Oh, I hope for your sake nothing is wrong with you, Anakin_ , Veris thought to himself as he closed his eyes and let his fingers slide up into the silk of Anakin’s hair.

As the afternoon had slowly passed into evening, Veris had run through the range of possibilities Isten’s off-handed remark about the library suggested and the likely outcomes of each in cold, clear detail.

He had come to his final conclusions about what to do while waiting for his share of their simple dinner that night, he and the two Jedi listening to Isten sing quietly as he cooked. At best, Anakin had simply worked himself into imagining something in the library. At worst, whatever artifact bending the Force in such unnatural ways around the mansion had taken more than an interest in him.

In the case of the former, Veris would at least get to tease Anakin with more of the dark than Obi-Wan would ever willingly show him, and in the case of the latter Veris would be able to act more objectively for the safety of the others than Obi-Wan would be able to do.

 _Let me inside, Anakin,_ he whispered silently and not without kindness, receiving a mulish assent and the barest glimmer of light in response. _Let me see you._

_I don’t trust you._

_You should. I will not judge you for your darkness, Anakin. You are safe with me. But to prove it I will allow you into my own spirit first._

Veris relaxed and let his mind fall away into the bittersweet void that lay inside him, sinking into it with the same breathless apprehension a man feels when he loses his grip on a cliff. There was nothing to be done but let the dark take him, swallow him, fill his lungs and heart and soul with the sheer power of it.

_Have my trust and my darkness, for it is yours._

He felt Anakin somewhere outside, somewhere other than this beautifully black ocean he floated in, and reached his awareness out toward the distant shimmer of his soul.

_Look, Anakin. See what I am. See what you are._

_I… I shouldn’t…_

**_Look._ **

 

A faint pressure grew against one of Veris’s palms, though he was too far gone into his trance to understand which one it was: Anakin was leaning into his touch ever so slowly as he lost the fight against his own morbid curiosity. He could almost hear Anakin’s thoughts-- _just one look onelook--_ and smiled as the star floating in this place without direction grew just bright enough to guide him.

 _Yes. Good, Anakin._ Veris allowed himself to drift outward, away, toward Anakin’s consciousness as carefully as he could. While Anakin’s mind brushed his, the Jedi uneasily fascinated with the undiluted power of the dark spreading out from Veris, Veris could ascertain what he needed to.

He concentrated on how Anakin had felt through the Force in the bedroom, and as he moved deeper than before, he was relieved to find Anakin felt the same in his own lovely, frightening way.

Anakin’s darkness was a narrow but vicious wound in his soul, a vein of cracks sparkling in a stained glass window and too deep for Veris to see the bottom of. There was the scent of flowers as well, light and crisp, and out on the little trail Veris smiled at this unique difference of Anakin from Isten.

Isten’s spirit reminded Veris of a late summer day, warm and languid and prone to sudden thunderstorms.

Anakin’s soul, or at least the cautious glimpse Veris could catch of it, felt like nothing but thunderstorms, ones laced with the subtle perfume of flowers. An image came to Veris, that of buds almost ready to open under roiling skies, swaying round and heavy on their vines as the wind gusted past.

 _Beautiful,_ he thought to himself, lost in the power he could sense even from this imperfect, reluctant bond. _My passionate little Jedi. So much emotion, so little idea of what to do with it. Are the flowers the Light, perhaps? Is that why Isten has none?_

Anakin was relaxing, starting to lean fully into his palms now from the growing pressure back outside in the real world, body beginning to sway like the unopened blooms Veris imagined as the Jedi saw whatever it was that Veris’s soul presented to him. _What do you see, Anakin?_ Veris wondered, curious, and then the temporary bond between them shattered as someone shoved Veris hard enough he staggered and slammed into one of the trees behind him.

 

* * *

 

“Get away from him,” Obi-Wan growled at the dazed Sith Lord as Veris steadied himself, sliding one arm around Anakin’s waist to catch Anakin in case he fell. “Anakin? Are you alright?”

“I’m… fine…” Anakin said, leaning heavily against Obi-Wan and fighting to keep his voice steady as his head spun from the sudden break with Veris’s mind.

“What in the third hell was he doing to you?”

“Obi-Wan, please, it’s alright--” Anakin whispered, nuzzling against him in an attempt to reassure him.

“Sorry, Anakin, but he needs to know,” Veris interrupted, raising his hands in a conciliatory gesture he hoped was exaggerated enough to be seen before turning to Obi-Wan. “There was a chance whatever is in the house attacked him when he and Isten returned for the beacon and I wanted to make sure nothing was wrong with him.”

“Why do you say that?” Obi-Wan asked in a tone so cold Anakin felt his own rising fury for Veris die away into terrified silence. The forest loomed large and still around them, cool and impassive.

“Ask him, Obi-Wan, not me.”

“Why is he saying that, Anakin?” Obi-Wan put his other arm around Anakin, leaning in to touch foreheads with him. _Are you alright?_

“I... “ He nodded, hugging Obi-Wan tightly and burying his face against his shoulder. “I’m fine. I promise,” came the muffled answer even as his halo in the Force shuddered with anxiety.

“When they were in the library getting the beacon Anakin felt a hand on him, but no one was there,” Veris offered with the cool detachment of a Temple instructor reporting on a Padawan’s progress as Anakin’s hands tightened on the small of Obi-Wan’s back.

“Given the incident back at the mansion, I felt it best I myself ascertain if Anakin had undergone any changes regarding the dark within him.”

Obi-Wan softly pushed Anakin back until he could see the moonlit outlines of his face, fighting to put words together through his shock. “You, you didn’t tell me about that, Anakin.”

“I know,” he whispered, bringing his hands up to tighten over Obi-Wan’s resting on his chest, fighting through a dozen confused feelings. “I’m sorry. I’m sorry, Obi-Wan.”

“But you told him?”

“To be fair to our poor Anakin,” Veris waved, “he didn’t. I only know because Isten happened to mention it this morning. He was there when it happened.”

“Shut up, Veris,” Obi-Wan snapped before looking back to Anakin. “Why didn’t you tell me?”

“You were so worried, and I didn’t want you to be, and I was fine! And I’ve been fine! Really!”

“You have to tell me things like this, Anakin!” Obi-Wan’s hands tightened on Anakin’s chest to a surge of concern and anger in the Force.

“Look, it’s ok!” he snapped with a twinge of guilt. “I’m ok! Right, Veris?”

Veris waited for Obi-Wan to take a calming breath before answering in as neutral a tone as he could. “Yes. His darkness, from what I could see, is the same as the first day we met in the bedroom. You were unconscious from the… attack, and he needed my word through a bond that I would not hurt either of you when we left for the woods.”

“You should have told me,” Obi-Wan said to Anakin, so quiet he was almost inaudible.

“Well, I didn’t! I’m sorry! Look, it’s over and… and I’m going back to camp. I don’t want to talk about this anymore.” Anakin stepped back out of reach, batting Obi-Wan’s hands away.

“Anakin--” Obi-Wan started, but Anakin strode off into the night in a rustle of leaves and a receding wave of snarled emotions in the Force.

Veris shook his head, tone low and sympathetic, once he was gone. “He loves you, Obi-Wan. He’s afraid of you seeing just how dark his soul truly is.”

He felt Obi-Wan’s furious glare cutting into him, as sharp as the ice in his words as he slowly turned to face him. “We had a need for you when we thought we would be in danger out here in the forest. Where is the need for you now?”

“Perhaps I am wrong,” Veris murmured after a pause. “Perhaps Anakin doesn’t want to see just how dark your soul truly is.”

“You will not goad me, Sith.”

“You will not kill me, Jedi. It is not your way.”

“Hurt Anakin and it will be.”

“Beyond Isten, Anakin is the one person I can assure you I have no desire to harm. You know that.”

The pounding of hurried footsteps cut off Obi-Wan’s reply as they both looked back in the direction of camp, Isten’s smoldering halo in the Force ghosting into Obi-Wan’s awareness as he came to a stop in front of both of them. “Anakin left! He said he was going for a walk and then just went into the woods toward the river. I guess he didn’t want to meet you two here on the path?”

Obi-Wan thought of how angry and embarrassed Anakin had been, and ran a hand over his beard with a heavy, defeated sigh at the thought of trying to talk to him in that kind of mood. “Isten, would you please go with him? None of us should be alone at night, even if the forest has been quiet so far.”

Veris nodded at the studiously casual question Isten sent through their bond. _Do you want me to go with him, Master?_

_Yes, please. And don’t be jealous, dear one. I promise I was simply checking him for our safety._

_Yes, Master,_ came the grumbled reply before he spoke to Obi-Wan. “Yeah, I’ll go catch up.”

 

* * *

 

Anakin walked, knowing he was headed in the direction of the river before he found himself swinging back around toward the main trail. He wanted to get away from Obi-Wan, from Veris, from the luscious horror that had awaited him inside Veris’s soul.

Focusing on the vague shapes in front of him, balancing just a hint of the Force with the shadows of plants and trees he could just make out, he emerged on the main path a short while later but no more settled. With no hesitation, he turned in the direction of the mansion and paused before he realized where his feet were taking him.

_Not the estate. The wreck._

The urge made sense: It was an old habit to strip down machines and engines when he was upset, the monotony of it soothing and helping to tamp down the worst of the noise in his head. There were no salvage shops in the middle of the forest, but it didn’t really matter. _Yes, the wreck._

“Hey! Wait up!”

He jumped and let out a curse, whirling to find Isten jogging up to him, the Sith more recognizable in the starlight for his identical gait than anything else. “What do you want?”

“I’m supposed to go with you. Man-eating beasts in the forest and all that.”

Anakin rolled his eyes and folded his arms, done arguing for the rest of the night. “Well, come on then. We’re going to the ship.”

“Why the ship?”

“I don’t know. Strip some parts. I just need something to do.” He set off down the path in the direction of the little pile of stones they saw every day on their walks to and from the river, not looking to see if Isten was following.

_If I can just get there and have something to focus on other than… other than that._

Anakin swallowed, shoving his mental shields up as high as they could go as his mind drifted to what he had seen in Veris once again. Sight wasn’t exactly the right word for it: in the haze of their minds touching, all the senses were jumbled together.

He saw once again the ghost-like image of a handsome young man kneeling naked, bound in ropes tied in elaborate knotwork thick around his chest, his arms, his thighs. This was not a memory rising from Veris’s soul. It was an ideal, a beloved icon both sacred and perverse.

Anakin felt the weight of the blindfold tied around the man’s eyes and smelled the leather of the collar snug around his throat. Helpless, the young man’s heart was beating fast with excitement at just how vulnerable he was before his dear, unseen master. _Use me, hurt me, love me_ , the man wanted to beg around the gag tied tightly around his mouth.

Anakin knew all of this because the young man was him.

The eyes under the blindfold might be a distinctive gold, and the man might answer to “Isten” in real life, but he was still Anakin at his core.

_I don’t understand!_

He stalked along through the night, hating the flush creeping along his face and glad for the night that hid it. _Is that what Isten wants? Is that what Veris wants?_

 _For me to be a…_ Anakin had no words for it or the sharp chill the image sent through his body, revulsion and desire tangled together. “Slave” was not the right word: there had been a feeling of joy, of bliss even, from his phantom twin at the knots biting into his ankles and wrists.

 _If Veris wants that… is that what Obi-Wan wants?_ Anakin arrived at the little pile of stones that marked the way off the path to the wreckage and took a hard turn out into the forest. Too distracted by his thoughts to maintain the fine balance needed in the Force to make his way through the pitch black, he drew and lit his saber as he walked, trees shifting blue and distorted all around him.

“What happened back there?” Isten asked after a while, still keeping a healthy distance behind him.

“Nothing.”

“Something upset you.”

Anakin stalked along, waving his hand in disgust back toward him. “Yeah. There are lots of things that upset me around here. Pick one.”

“Did Master... touch you?”

“No.”

“Good.”

Anakin snorted at Isten’s quick answer as they emerged from the trees, the forest falling away to reveal a rough, ugly trench of fresh dirt and wreckage that gleamed in the starlight. _You are insane. Both of you._

He pointed toward the misshapen hulk of the cockpit still propped up on what was left of a wing thrust into the earth. “Come on. We’ll disassemble the control board first.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I'm so happy I got this done, and hope y'all like it. What did you think? 
> 
> I'm still pretty low-energy due to my ongoing health issues, so the next update might take another three weeks or a month but I'll try to get it in before then. Thanks as always for your support and comments! <3


	15. Return

Anakin approached the wreck through the rough wake of overturned earth and splintered wood it had left behind, surprised at the small green shoots he passed that waved indigo in the starlight. _I guess we really have been here awhile._

 _We won’t be much longer, though._ The sureness of this thought caught him by surprise, and he wondered if it was a premonition from the Force.

“This way,” he said over his shoulder to Isten as he reached the remnant of the wing buried deep in the earth. It made a good platform up into the open ruin of the cockpit, where the wall was now the floor and debris lay scattered ankle-deep as he stepped onto it.

“Seems steady enough.” Isten climbed up to stand next to him, pointing to the black silhouette of jagged edges all around them where part of the cabin roof had been sheared off. “You two were lucky to survive that crash,” he offered, crouching to help Anakin start tossing out the biggest pieces and clear a place to sit. They both used only their mechno-hands as they worked, unsure of how much sharp metal or broken transparisteel they might be reaching down into.

“I’m the Chosen One, they keep saying.”

“Point.”

They worked silently in the dark, the only sound the brittle crack of twisted pieces of plating and metal landing on the hard ground below, until both of them were able to sit cross-legged next to each other atop one wall panel each. The forest stood black and impenetrable all around save the open wound of the landing stretching away empty behind them.

“Let’s do the copilot board,” Anakin lifted a hand and patted the side of the copilot’s chair that hung directly over him. “I’ll gut, you sort.”

“Sounds good to me.”

Anakin took a deep breath before he started, running through his mental list of what should be on any general civilian control board. It was soothing to focus on something so mundane: the type of wiring and connectors, the likelihood of valuable metals being used for the main board electronics, the depreciation any scratch or burn marks would bring to components.

As a young slave, Anakin had often been given the more delicate salvage work to do when old junk came in to the shop, his mother taking it upon herself to handle the more strenuous and dangerous jobs.

Here, who knew how far away from the planet Anakin had spent his childhood on, the industrial smell of plastisteel and solder that greeted him when he pried the small cover panel loose from the side of the copilot chair was soothing in a strange way. He had work to do, that smell said, neat and tidy work that needed to be done carefully.

To his side, Isten yawned and stretched. “So how much you want to do before we go back?”

“The whole ship?” Anakin muttered, reaching in and unplugging the first layer of webbed tubing. “That’d be good.”

“Ok, since you’re not going to tell me what happened back there, I’m going to guess,” Isten said, taking the jumble Anakin handed to him and easily twisting off the metal ends to toss over the side.

Anakin made a face and stuck his hands back up into the open panel.

“Since I’m you, I’ve got a pretty good chance of getting it right, I think.” Isten neatly braided the tubing and set it behind him before taking the slim board Anakin handed to him next. “You saw something you didn’t like.”

“Someone get this man a seat on the Council,” Anakin grumbled up into his work. “He’s vague enough.”

Isten held up the board in the dim light to examine one corner more closely before popping off several connectors. “But it wasn’t something that you hate. We get violent when we see something we actually hate. This was more… embarrassing, wasn’t it?”

“Look, if I tell you will you shut up about it?” Yanking out another wiring harness, Anakin looked over at Isten as he tossed it in his lap. “Like you don’t know already, if you took the time to think about it.”

Isten took the wires and studied them, untangling and snapping off a few burned ones, the singed smell of them rising briefly over the evergreen of the forest. “Huh. Maybe.”

“I just, I just don’t understand _that._ The thing you and Veris have for _that._ ”

“Hey, you can sit next to me on the Council, Master Vague-us.”

“You know what I mean. The...” Anakin reached up into the blackness of the open panel, unwilling to meet Isten’s gaze as he finished. “The slave thing.”

“Oh,” Isten said quietly and with a bit of surprise, not speaking again until he had folded and woven the wiring harness into a skein, gently knotting the resulting bulk once and placing it behind him atop a small but growing pile of components. “That thing.”

Anakin pried half a dozen more pieces out and handed them off before Isten spoke again in a gentle whisper that could barely be heard above the chirping of insects from the forest around them. “Anakin, you can’t be that surprised. You know that Master and I come from Obi-Wan and you.”

“And the dark.”

“Not that part.” He shrugged as Anakin turned back to look at him with narrowed eyes. “Yeah, Master and I were made from the dark, from whatever thing is in that mansion.”

Isten licked his lips, looking out into the night. “But how I feel when I give into him, when I trust him with all of me? That’s not the dark. Nothing that,” he hesitated, searching for the right word, “...pure... could be of the dark.”

The sincerity of his tone left Anakin speechless, and he turned back around to continue pulling wiring loose with an embarrassed determination.

They worked in silence for a long while, lost in their own thoughts as they finished the copilot board and shifted over to the spread of the main control panel now on its side and rising like a wall before Anakin.

“What does it feel like?” Anakin asked as he handed a small board back to Isten, tense and half-expecting Isten to burst out laughing that Anakin had taken him seriously.

Isten said nothing, but after setting the part aside he brought his hand up to rest on Anakin’s back. It sat there, the gloved palm cool and heavy through the thin undertunic Anakin wore, a familiar weight resting in an unusual place, between his own shoulder blades.

 _What are you doing?_ Anakin asked through the Force with wary curiosity, continuing to work at a stubborn connector he couldn’t get loose.

“I’m here,” Isten said with quiet patience. “That pressure you feel on your back. It tells you I’m here. Even if I didn’t say anything, you’d know I was here by that pressure.”

“So?”

“We don’t like words, you and me. They’re too easy to misunderstand and twist around. Too easy for people to say without meaning them. Right?”

Anakin said nothing but paused in his work, tilting his head to listen. Isten’s hand remained unmoving on his back, anchoring his twin’s calm words in the balmy night air.

“But attention. Touch. Those carry weight. Those show thought and care.”

Anakin said nothing, and Isten slid his hand up to close over Anakin’s shoulder. “I could tell you ‘I’m here,’ but when I take you by the shoulder, I don’t have to say anything. You know, without a doubt, that I am.”

“What does that have to do with me and Obi-Wan?”

“Veris and I are a reflection of both of you. I can’t explain it well because I don’t understand it. I have no clear memories of anything before we woke up separate in the library. But I do know that we were one. Both of your wants and fears together.”

“So my fear is becoming a slave again? That’s pretty obvious.”

“No. Your fear is Falling to the dark.” Isten pulled Anakin back, touch delicate but firm, and lowered his voice. “What you want is to be his, to be his like I am Master’s. Not a slave. Cherished. Cared for. Knowing from Obi-Wan’s actions that he loves you and is thinking only about you. Not his words.” 

“I saw you… us… tied. There were so many knots. Like some kind of pleasure slave. Gagged. Blindfolded. How is that love?”

“Was I frightened?”

“No. You were… happy. Excited.”

“Yes. When I trust him with all of me, the noise stops. That noise we can never get rid of. It goes away. And I think that it’s because I know for a fact, beyond any kind of doubt, that I am loved when we are like that. That I don’t have to be afraid of anything. Because he is there with me.”

“Oh.” Anakin remembered the brief moment of peace he had experienced that morning beneath Obi-Wan, the single, impossible moment of perfect balance before orgasm crashed through him.

“So you two have done,” Anakin looked over his shoulder, willing himself to finish despite the fresh warmth rising on his face, “...what I saw in Veris’s mind?”

Isten sat back, voice thoughtful as he pulled his hand back to rest in his lap. “I don’t think so, from what you said. I mean, nothing that elaborate. But I’m sure we will once we get out of here. Master loves to spoil me.”

“So you like that kind of thing. Not him.”

“No, he likes it too. You know he doesn’t have noise in his head like we do. But I think he has doubts, and worries, and when we trust him with all of us, it helps that.”

“I don’t understand,” Anakin told him, looking at the tangled guts of the board lying in shadow. _Useless,_ he thought to himself with a twinge of annoyance, and tilted his head back to draw a sigh.

Up on the sweep of the control board now bared to the sky, something caught his attention, a tiny glint of blinking light wedged into a crack underneath the overhang of what was left of the far side of the cockpit.

 _Is that?..._ Isten was talking, trying to explain something, but Anakin didn’t hear a word as his mind began to race. _That spot would have been within reach when I was sitting in the pilot chair._

“Do you see that, Isten?” he interrupted, pointing upward into the shadows. _I don’t remember waking up in the cockpit. I woke up on the ground._

“What?”

Anakin pulled himself up and clambered atop the side of the copilot chair like the side of a cliff, reaching up and impatiently yanking on the pilot chair above him to test its strength. When it didn’t budge he lifted himself up with a curse of amazement. “It’s my comm!”

“Huh?”

He stood up slowly and carefully so as not to lose his balance atop the side of the pilot chair, looking at the personal wrist comm neatly pushed into the tallest sheltered point on the ship. Safe from the weather, visible only from the cockpit, it blinked dully at him in the standby mode a comm went into when its owner took it off. _It’s in the highest spot in the wreckage, like I was trying to improve the signal. I must have been so out of it when we crashed I thought I turned its emergency signal on before I stuck it up there._

“Look!” Laughing, earlier anger swept away by immense relief, Anakin pulled the device loose and snapped it neatly into place on his glove.

“No kriffing way,” Isten grinned as Anakin lowered himself back down to the creak of the pilot seat and the shudder of the wall panels beneath them as he dropped the rest of the way. “It was there the whole time?”

“Guess so.” _After I put it up there I must have I pulled Obi-Wan loose and then passed out near him on the ground._ Anakin kept staring at the comm, expecting it to vanish, but the small, unassuming piece of metal remained where it was.

It felt like an artifact from a different time and place, and Anakin realized with a bittersweet mix of excitement and anxiety what it meant: their time here was over.

His embarrassment and confusion at what he had experienced with Veris forgotten, Anakin could only smile in dazed relief out across the darkened forest as Isten clapped him on the back. “Lucky bastard.” 

“That’s me,” Anakin murmured. “Let’s take it back to Obi-Wan before opening a channel, in case the charge is low and we only get one shot.”

 

* * *

 

Veris and Obi-Wan had returned to the campsite to retire to opposite sides of the fire, not a word spoken between them since Isten had taken off after Anakin.

Veris had without prompting taken on Isten’s watch duty, sinking down to sit cross-legged with his hood pulled down over his closed eyes, and Obi-Wan studied him from across the warm glow of the campfire for the long, silent stretch of time that followed.

 _Risky but clever_ , Obi-Wan finally decided. _To counter my anger, he’s made himself even more vulnerable._ Obi-Wan thought about the extra saber tucked into the back of his belt, a near-twin of his own. _He knows I would be loathe to strike an unarmed man._

 _Especially one who was trying to help Anakin._ Obi-Wan wasn’t sure he believed that was all Veris had hoped to accomplish, but as he focused on slowing his breathing to a steady rhythm, a cool, bloodless train of thought came along with it. _The truth is I cannot bear to look at Anakin’s darkness too long, or get close enough to examine it. It reminds me too much of my own._

 _I fear_ , he thought, folding his arms against a sudden chill, _that Anakin’s may call to mine and my own might answer it._

_But Veris... Who better to search Anakin’s darkness than one made from that same darkness we share? And predisposed to care about him?_

Obi-Wan allowed his gaze to fall to the fire and rest on a branch smoldering white-hot in the center of the flames. _Perhaps it would be better to see him as a tool rather than an opponent. Until we are away from this strange place for good._

“They’re returning,” Veris said some time later, voice made hazy by the light trance he was in.  

Obi-Wan looked up from the meditation he had dropped into, blinking and rubbing his eyes at the late hour. “Good.” He reached out through the Force and was surprised to find an odd, unexpected glow to Anakin’s aura.  

At the same time, Veris pulled his hood off and considered the direction the pair would appear from. “Isten feels…” He trailed off, mouth twisting into a frown.

“...excited?” Obi-Wan finished, at just as much of a loss as Veris.

“Yes.”

 _Did they meet a local?_ Obi-Wan wondered to himself as he stood up, Veris following suit, to examine the path stretching off into the blackness before him. _We haven’t seen any sign of any._

The giddy relief radiating from Anakin made him glance up at the sky for a moment despite the silence of the night. _I don’t hear any gunships. Our men aren’t here early_.

He looked down to find Anakin walking into the ruddy gold of the firelight, and all of his questions fell away at the sight of him.

It took a second and an eternity all at once in Obi-Wan’s mind for Anakin to emerge from the shadows of the path, the unexpected and luscious wave of emotion that swept through him at Anakin’s easy, honest smile leaving him speechless.

 _I love you._ It was less of a conscious thought than a simple truth, deep and fundamental, Anakin completely unaware of it as he grinned and lifted up his gloved hand to show Obi-Wan something. The frustration and worry of earlier in the evening died away, leaving only a fierce adoration behind. _I love you so, my beautiful boy._

_I would do anything for you. Anything to keep you safe and happy._

“... tucked up into the top of the wreck,” Anakin was saying, and Obi-Wan smiled back, unable to help himself at Anakin’s excitement even as he realized he had completely missed what Anakin had said.

“What? I’m sorry, what did you find?” he asked, not understanding at first why Anakin was pointing at his glove. “Wait. Is that…”

“Yep, my comm,” Anakin laughed as Isten nodded proudly next to him. “Want to get out of here?”

Obi-Wan shook his head in stunned disbelief as a hush fell over the four of them, holding his hands out to cradle the cool weight of Anakin’s arm so he could study it more closely. “Yes. I, I can’t believe it. It really is your comm.”

“It’s probably low on power so I’m thinking we should just open an audio channel?”

“Yes, that would be best,” Obi-Wan said, letting go and taking a reluctant step back, the unpleasant idea that came to him whole and complete requiring a much greater effort to say aloud. “But... I shouldn’t be the one talking.”

“What?” Anakin paused, hand over the buttons.

“You and Veris will be leaving this place together. He should talk instead of me.”

Veris raised an eyebrow but said nothing, lifting his hand into the air to remind Isten to remain silent as well as the two Sith watched the pair of Jedi with cautious interest.

“What? Why?”

Obi-Wan hated how easily the pieces fit into place as he explained them. “Think of it as a test to see if he can pass as me. If Veris can’t make them believe he is me over an audio channel, we have no hope of them believing he is me in person.”

He gave a Veris a look of distaste as he recalled the little Force trick Veris and Isten had been practicing with their eyes over the past week: a shift from gold to the same blues Obi-Wan and Anakin sported. “Blue eyes or not.”

Anakin fixed Veris with a hard look that Veris only returned with a bland smile. “He has a point, Anakin.”

“That doesn’t mean I have to like it.”

“Me neither,” Isten grumbled, folding his arms and backing up to sit down by the fire. He tilted his head and looked away petulantly, whatever Veris was saying to him through their bond not enough to smooth over the unhappy fact he and his master would now be separated sooner than they had thought.

Obi-Wan knew how he felt. It was one thing to know he and Anakin would be apart for some time, possibly a few months while Veris and Anakin quietly arranged for a return flight with a ship for the two Sith, but it was another entirely to have it looming over him without warning.

As soon as Anakin opened that channel, everything that had been waiting for them would sweep back in.

The war. Their duties. Their lives as Jedi. 

Obi-Wan put aside the thought as best he could and moved back to sit down across the fire from Isten as he spoke to Anakin across their bond. _Please, Anakin. I am no more eager than you to do this, but we have to make sure that… this is going to work._

The sentence hung heavy between them, their bond full of uncertainty and guilt at what they were about to do. _I know_ , Anakin replied, giving his silent assent to the plan with a single nod to Veris. 

 _We are in this together now,_ Obi-Wan reminded himself even as his spirit recoiled at the sight of Veris moving to stand next to Anakin as Anakin held out his comm between them. _Veris and Isten cannot be captured and questioned. For Anakin’s sake, they cannot be._  

“Shall we contact the Captain?” Veris offered. “Fastest to get here, wherever here is, most likely.”

“Yeah.” Anakin gave the comm a hesitant set of taps and spoke into it, his words feeling strange from disuse even as he instantly fell back into their rhythm.

“Captain Rex, this is General Skywalker. Repeat, this is General Skywalker. Do you copy?”

 

* * *

 

Veris opened his thoughts to the cloud of memories drifting formless in the back of his mind, focusing on Obi-Wan’s recollections of Captain Rex as the comm on Anakin’s wrist lay silent while they awaited a response.

“Yes, sir. About time, sir.” The clone’s voice burst into life in the firelit clearing, harsh and out of place among the hazy blacks and oranges all around them.

“You’re telling me.” Anakin stared straight ahead, refusing to look at Veris. “General Kenobi is here too.”

“Situation, General Skywalker?”

“Normal.”

“Glad to hear it. Overdue protocol code required. Confirm?”

At Rex’s gruff words nonetheless laced with relief, the soft descent of memories into Veris’s mind tumbled into an avalanche, and he found himself speaking in the calm, measured tones of an understandably tired Obi-Wan. “Jedi Officers 83-914 and 83-915, initiating Overdue Protocol Response Alpha as per Order 26. Code 7819002. Current position unknown, requesting evac.”

“IDs confirmed. Welcome back, gentlemen.”

“Good to be back, Rex,” Anakin said, hiding his unease at how effortlessly Veris had slipped into the same lingo he had. “I don’t suppose you know where we are, do you? We sure don’t.” 

“Yes, sir. You two are on Yena Five. Yena’s an independent system just out of Republic space near the Rusata cluster. We’ve known where you were for almost a week now but we can’t get to you for at least another week. Maybe two.”

“Why not?” Veris asked, glancing up at the night sky. “The Rusata cluster isn’t that far away from the Mid-Rim by hyperspace lanes.”

“Politics, sir. The whole Yena system is the private property of a noble Telladorian family and they’ve been... less than helpful. When we were met by armed droid patrols at the edge of the system and sent a request to be allowed in, the family insisted through a long-winded document that we come back with only one squad, no more than five more crew members, and an unarmed civilian ship. Commander Tano and Commander Cody returned to the fight while the Council placed me in charge of retrieving you.”

Through the newly sharpened memories Obi-Wan had unknowingly given him, Veris could easily imagine Rex folding his arms behind him, as he often did when he was displeased with a situation but had to remain professional. “And then when I returned with a squad, five men, and the unarmed civilian ship, the family told us to come back again with a salvage ship large enough to cart out the remains of your ship that you had been so rude as to likely crash on their property. But still with only five crew past the squad. Apologies, Generals. It took us a while to find a good-sized salvage ship that could run on that small of a crew. Now we’re waiting for the final approval to enter the system.”

“Why couldn’t the Telladorians just come pick us up themselves and give us to you?” Anakin frowned down at the comm, a jolt of anger shooting through him. _Seriously? We’ve been kept here because of some rich idiots throwing their weight around?_

“The family can’t agree on who owns the system so none of them are legally allowed in either. Apparently, the last owner disappeared a long while back on some weird sort of voyage no one wants to talk about, and didn’t leave any heirs behind. No wife, no kids. It looks like the rest of the family’s been fighting over the Yena system in the Telladorian courts ever since.”

Veris shot the comm a sharp, considering glare while he waited for Rex to finish, absentmindedly giving Anakin the same raised hand he had cautioned Isten with earlier. “Was the last owner’s name Samal?”

“Hang on, let me see. Yeah, looks like.”

“And he had no wife?”

“No, sir,” Rex answered, unaware of the way the four men in the darkened clearing were now staring at the comm. “Never married. Not even any companions close enough to try to claim his holdings after he disappeared.”

“I see.” Veris kept his tone casual even as he saw his own growing sense of alarm reflected in Obi-Wan’s eyes across the fire as the Jedi stood in wordless surprise.

_So who was Samal talking about in his journals? Who did he build this estate for?_

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I can't believe it: only a few chapters left! Thank you as always for your comments and support! <3 <3 <3 
> 
> We have moved into our new place and hopefully my health will definitively take a turn for the better soon. Next update will probably be in three weeks or so. Take care, and a very Happy New Year to those who are celebrating it this week!


	16. Farewells

The surreal conversation ended with Rex’s usual matter-of-fact recap that followed briefings: he and his crew had been tracing the beacon whenever it had been on, so even if the comm died, as long as the beacon stayed on, he and his crew would still be able to zero in on Obi-Wan and Anakin planetside once they got closer. And with the last apparent legal hurdle cleared the day before, it would be a week, two at most, before the final official approval for entry into the system came from the family.

Rex had no way of knowing the effect his familiar, impassive voice had on the four men listening. The clearing felt smaller, the world less mysterious. The forest around them was no less beautiful, but it had in the course of a few minutes shifted from a haven of sorts to just another temporary bit of happiness, another brief lull in the war that awaited them back on the front.

After Anakin signed off with a casual air that gave no hint as to the new tension stringing through the Jedi and Sith, the crackle of the fire was the only sound until Isten stood up and whirled, striding off down the path toward the main trail.

“Isten,” Veris called, already walking off after him, and soon Obi-Wan and Anakin were the only two left bathed in the flickering orange of the firelight.

“Let them sort it out,” Obi-Wan offered at Anakin’s confused look to him and back out into the darkness, sitting back down with a sigh and running his hand over his beard. “I was hoping to talk with Veris about the datapads and Samal’s wife, but it looks like that will have to wait.”

“Yeah,” Anakin said, sitting down next to him. “Isten’s upset about Veris leaving.”

“It would seem so.” Obi-Wan tossed another branch in the fire to a wash of sparks dancing upward, frowning into the flames.

“Are you upset?” Anakin asked, unable to help himself. “About me leaving?”

Obi-Wan turned toward him, a sad smile on his face. “Yes. Of course I am.” He gestured off toward the path. “I don’t want you off with Veris. I hated just watching the two of you talk to Rex together. That’s my place, next to you. Not his.”

Anakin tried to smile back, pleasantly surprised to hear Obi-Wan speak so plainly about how he felt, but it wasn’t enough to stop the anxiety seeping through him. “Really?”

“Really.” Obi-Wan ran his hand up and down Anakin’s leg, over the firm muscle beneath the soft fabric. “Stars, I’ll miss you.”

 _We could comm Rex back. Right now,_ Anakin half-heartedly sent through their bond, but he knew what Obi-Wan would say even as he did.

 _Even if we tell him everything that’s happened, he’ll still have to arrest all four of us and take us back to the Temple. He has no way of determining who is who, and he wouldn’t want to risk having Ahsoka do that. It’ll be the Council._ Obi-Wan slid his arm around Anakin, gently pressing Anakin’s head to his shoulder as he explained what they both already knew. _Having your comm doesn’t change the plan._

Anakin curled into Obi-Wan, closing his eyes and trying to lose himself in the clean, familiar scent of him. “A week. Rex could be here in a week.”

“That’s not such a short time,” Obi-Wan tried to reassure him, stroking Anakin’s back, but the words felt weak and empty to both of them.

They settled down to sleep without talking of it further, Anakin’s head in Obi-Wan’s lap and Anakin too exhausted to stay awake for long while Obi-Wan kept watch, lost in thought.

He sat awake until the two Sith crept back into the dying glow of the fire just before dawn.

Even in the dim light Obi-Wan could see how red Isten’s eyes were as he nodded a tired hello to Obi-Wan, and Veris, just behind Isten, shot a warning look at Obi-Wan not to say anything.

“I’ll take over watch and just sleep later on today. Why don’t you get some rest?” Veris whispered to Obi-Wan as the two Sith sat down on their side of the fire.

“Thank you,” Obi-Wan nodded without moving, only shifting to lie down next to Anakin after Isten gave him a small, weary smile and turned to put his face against Veris’s chest.

Despite Obi-Wan’s exhaustion, it took him some time to fall asleep, his mind unable to let go of how tightly Isten nuzzled into Veris across the last embers of the campfire. It was the same needful, loving way Anakin had curled into him, as if the bruises marring Isten’s skin weren’t there at all.

 

* * *

 

Whether it was Obi-Wan or Veris who first suggested it, no one could remember, but the four of them ended up spending almost all of the following day and the one after that at the river. The bright waves and beautiful views couldn’t entirely lift the solemn mood that had fallen over the group, but it soothed the worst of it for almost everyone.

Anakin was the only one who suddenly, inexplicably found the river a complete waste of time, and he refused to swim at all.

Both days found him spending most of his time either leaned against Obi-Wan or sitting on the shore with his arms wrapped around his knees while Isten fished or swam or dozed stretched out in the sun.

“What are you doing?” Anakin grumbled late afternoon on the second day as Isten surfaced from the water and tossed a riverstone onto the bank from where he drifted. It clacked against a small pile of other stones like it and bounced back into the clear shallows with a splash.

Isten had idly begun collecting them that morning, bringing one up every now and then whenever he dove down far enough to touch the river bottom further out from the shore.

“I don’t know. Something. Better than nothing,” Isten said, coming close enough to the bank to stand waist-deep and splashing water up at Anakin’s bare feet with a lack of his usual enthusiasm. “Come on. You’ll feel better if you’re doing something.”

“I hate this place.”

“Hey, at least you get to leave it.” Isten turned and walked back into the river for another dive, the sun shimmering across his wet skin and the marks he bore.

Anakin muttered under his breath and glared off into the distance before his gaze fell back to Isten.

In the strictest sense of the word, he had been doing something rather than nothing as he brooded by the water with Veris and Obi-Wan talking to each other further up the bank. Anakin had been watching Isten for almost an hour, nursing a strange, aimless anger that he had woken up with that morning and that grew a little more with every bruise on his Sith twin that Anakin studied from his perch on the riverbank.

Deep, fading scratches down Isten’s back, a nasty ring of fresh bruises winding around his bare left wrist, ghostly prints on his upper arms and throat that floated across his skin like violet clouds at twilight.

Isten bore them all without any kind of shame or embarrassment, seemingly unaware of them as he slid beneath the waves and disappeared in swirls of white and silver.

 _Of course you don’t care if Veris goes. You know he loves you,_ Anakin found himself thinking with a bitter certainty despite how irrational it sounded.

Veris and Obi-Wan had drifted back to looking over the datapads the day before, murmuring to each other in the lush shade at the edge of the treeline for hours at a time.

Anakin gave a listless, annoyed sigh as he heard them revisit the same point they had circled back to at least three times before that day: the exact relationship between Samal and the woman he had built the estate for.

“Look, Veris, right here in the second datapad he calls her his ‘twice-crowned blossom of the night’. That is a direct homage to “Poem of the Summer Night” in the classical Telladorian poetry collection ‘The Scroll of the Third Consort’, which I know you are familiar with because I am familiar with it.”

“Refresh my memory, if you would. As I have tried to tell you, it takes time and effort to pull memories forward. I do not have instant recall of everything you have ever learned.”

“Hmm. Isten has also said neither of you have any of our memories beginning the morning you woke up in the library. Is that true as well?”

“Yes, it is. It would seem that marked the true break between you and us.”

Obi-Wan said nothing in response to this, his aura suggesting to Anakin he did not fully trust Veris as he returned to the literature he had mentioned. “‘Poem of the Summer Night' talks of lovers as if they are stars. At one point it calls the largest Telladorian moon the ‘twice-crowned mistress of the night,’ wearing the crescents of the two smaller moons at certain times of year and symbolic of the most precious of all a man’s loves. By using that phrase with the subtle change of ‘mistress’ to ‘blossom’, Samal is clearly referencing a literal mistress here, one he deeply cared about. Enough to build an estate for wherever she wanted him to.”

“That is hardly proof she was his secret lover that no one knew about, Obi-Wan. I am telling you, she was his wife, or was going to be shortly, and the family has conveniently forgotten that in their quest for his holdings. A man does not go on like that about a woman and not marry her.”

Veris continued, the impatience in his smooth voice grating on Anakin where he sat with his back to them. “In seven datapads of poetic nonsense slowly devolving into sheer nonsense, is there a single mention of her ill, or in any way less than perfect? Even just eating a meal? No. Even as his mind crumbled under whatever artifact is here, Samal adored this woman, idolized her beyond reason. There is no way the family did not know about her.”

“Then why didn’t she show up after all of this and claim his holdings? Why stay out of sight if he’s dead and there is a fortune to be gained?”

“Because she died here, Obi-Wan. Can we at least agree on that? What else can that last entry possibly mean?”

“I don’t know,” Obi-Wan said with a hint of stubborness. “There is no proof she died.”

Another loud clatter startled Anakin: Isten had resurfaced and tossed another riverstone onto the pile. The Sith rolled his eyes at Veris and Obi-Wan and fell back into the water when he realized what they were talking about, leaving Anakin with the endless argument once again.

 _I could tell you what that last entry said at this point. In the original Telladorian._ Anakin closed his eyes, willing himself to stay where he was, to be calm and mature and not give into the ire he could feel building just out of sight.

“‘I leave these humble words behind, safe for the next traveler, knowing with a shameless pride that no one will ever know her beauty as I did. She has vanished from her garden but I hear her sweet voice still. I go to it now.’” A dry click sounded over the rustling of the leaves overhead, probably Veris tapping the datapad for emphasis. “She is dead at this point. Samal went mad and murdered her.”

 _Who cares?_ Anakin wanted to shout, digging his fingers into his arms to try to keep himself still.

Obi-Wan’s disagreement flared in the Force, prickling the air. “It could also be read more like, ‘I give you this testimony, you who travel on the safe path, because I pity the fact you will never know her beauty as I did. She has walked away from her garden, but I will hear her sweet voice again. I will find her.’”

“That changes little beyond proving how pedantic you can be, Obi-Wan. So Samal went mad and, frightened of him, she ran away somewhere into the woods. She is still about to be dead. Likely at his hand. So is he. Likely at his hand.”

 _Why does it matter if they’re dead? They don’t matter!_ Anakin shot to his feet, striding back up the slope toward Obi-Wan and Veris and the clunky metal devices sitting stacked between them. _None of that matters!_

“One could argue...” Obi-Wan trailed off, a datapad in hand, too surprised at the sudden well of the Force ugly and sharp all around them to do anything as Anakin loomed over them with narrowed eyes.

“Anakin?” Veris asked, equally caught off guard.

Anakin clenched his fist with a jerk of his hand and a violent wave of the Force swept along the bank to crush the six datapads where they lay on the ground, the last yanked cleanly from Obi-Wan’s hand into Anakin’s gloved one to the sound of squealing metal as the other six crumpled in on themselves.

Isten surfaced with a splash and gasp for air, not knowing exactly what had happened but Anakin’s pulse of rage evident even from the bottom of the river.

“Who cares about them? They’re dead! They died a long time ago!” Anakin jabbed a finger at his own chest as he gripped the last datapad so hard he cracked the screen. “I’m right here!” he shouted. “I’m right here, Obi-Wan, and I’m not going to be soon and you don’t care!”

Obi-Wan and Veris gaped at Anakin as he threw the ruined datapad aside, shards of glass glittering in the afternoon light as he did. “You’d rather sit there and argue about some rich, useless spice addict! Guess what? He probably went crazy and murdered everyone! Decades ago! Who karking cares?”

“Anakin--” Veris said, touching Obi-Wan’s knee instinctively, the Sith almost as alarmed by the hurt flaring to life in Obi-Wan’s aura as much as he was Anakin’s shimmering wrath.

“Shut up!” Anakin swung his finger up toward the sky, turning back to where Obi-Wan sat speechless. “Rex is coming on that ship and I am going to leave you! For weeks, maybe months! And you’re just sitting there like it’s nothing! Like I’m nothing!”

Veris opened his mouth to interrupt when Obi-Wan cut him off, reply laced with a fresh flare of anger no less powerful than Anakin’s. “What do you want me to say? You know that isn’t true!”

Anakin felt a flash of giddy pleasure he couldn’t explain, a cruel urge to laugh in Obi-Wan’s face, rise up and then vanish again into the roiling tide of his fury. “I… I don’t want you to say anything! I want you to do something! Act like you care!”

Words giving out, he let out a final curse and stomped off toward the path, still barefoot and fists clenched at his sides. Veris and Obi-Wan stood as one, watching him disappear into the forest, the only movement Veris lifting his hand and letting it fall again when Isten moved to come up out of the river. _Stay there, dear one,_  the gesture said. _Don’t follow him this time._

“I don’t understand,” Obi-Wan murmured, fire burning down to pained, awful confusion. “How could he think that? Any of that?”

“Anakin is not like us, Obi-Wan,” Veris said, indicating the mangled remains of the datapads as he sat back down. “Go after him before he works himself up any further.”

“He made it clear he doesn’t want to talk to me right now.”

“That’s when he needs to talk to you the most.”

Obi-Wan’s instinct to make a biting reply died away at the concern in Veris’s eyes as the Sith studied the direction Anakin had gone.

There was no mockery in Veris’s tone, and before Obi-Wan hurried off into the woods he briefly marveled at the depth of his own love for Anakin, a love so strong it could live on in the heart of a man formed wholly from the dark.

 

* * *

 

Anakin didn’t stop or even slow when the lush grass of the riverbank gave way to the rougher dirt of the path under his bare feet. The hard pebbles and packed earth felt good, like a tether to the world beyond his own raging thoughts that came and went with such wild force it was impossible to focus on any one of them. It took several minutes before he could articulate anything, even to himself. _Apart. We’ll be apart._ _  
_

The noise in his soul swelled louder than the forest rustling all around him, the only coherent idea to surface so bleak it made his chest twinge. _And he doesn’t care about you. He’s happy to leave you to Veris. He doesn’t care what happens to you._

_You’re not worth him caring about. You’re not. You know that._

Anakin stumbled and crouched on the path with his arms wrapped around his waist, a small figure beneath the massive trees stretching all around him, suddenly unable to breathe as vertigo mercilessly twisted the sky into the ground.

Blackness crept in, dull and hungry and hissing at him. _He doesn’t care he doesn’t care he doesn’t care--_

“Anakin.”

The soft word caught him by surprise, and the vicious litany receded as quickly as it had come, leaving him gasping for air as Obi-Wan’s arms slid around him and pulled him to his feet.

“Shh,” Obi-Wan whispered, hugging him close, trying to force down his own rattled emotions to better soothe Anakin. “Shh, I’m here. I’m here, dear one.”

Anakin collapsed into him with shaky breaths, burying his face in Obi-Wan’s shoulder and his hands trembling as they danced along his back in an uncertain embrace. “I’m sorry, I’m sorry, I’m sorry…”

“Shh,” Obi-Wan repeated, sympathy overwhelming as much of his earlier anger as the adrenaline rushing through him could allow. “It’s alright. I’m here.” He reached out through their bond with the same worried, loving sentiment, but a sudden fear gripped Anakin-- _Don’t let him see!--_ and he slammed his side of the bond closed.

At Obi-Wan’s silent bewilderment circling his mind, Anakin only shook his head, pressing his face harder against Obi-Wan’s shoulder and the thin linen of his tunic.

Frowning, Obi-Wan withdrew back into his own mind and settled for stroking Anakin’s hair instead. He focused on taking calming breaths timed to his fingers carding through Anakin’s hair, a quiet invitation for Anakin to breathe with him.

They stood twined together on the path for some time, halfway between the house and the river, the crisp smell of the evergreen trees around them muffled by the soothing, familiar scent of the other.

Anakin eventually began to follow Obi-Wan’s lead, his breath hot against Obi-Wan’s throat as he gave exhales that became steadier and steadier as the minutes passed. He finally lifted his head up, eyes still on the ground, to let Obi-Wan see him.

“Hello,” Obi-Wan whispered, brushing a stray lock of hair from Anakin’s face. “Hello, dear one.”

Anakin stared at the ground, face flushing a ruddy tan.

“What happened back there?” Obi-Wan smoothed back another wave of Anakin’s hair, first on one side of his face and then the other. He kept his fear out of his voice as much as he could, but the snapping of the datapad screens felt like ice cracking across a winter pond they were walking over.

“I just… I got so angry.”

“Angry with me?”

“Yes. No.” He glanced up at Obi-Wan, blue eyes pained, and then dropped his gaze back to the ground. “Are you really going to miss me?”

“Yes, Anakin. A hundred times, yes.”

“And this? We get to keep this, when we go back? Us?” Another skittish look at Obi-Wan and away, as if he were afraid of the answer.

Obi-Wan stroked Anakin’s cheek, heart swelling with a fierce, proud love as he wondered if this was the real fear at the root of Anakin’s violent outburst. “Yes, Anakin.” He had no idea of what their relationship would look like beyond the fact they would be together, but all that mattered in the moment was Anakin’s clear, desperate need to hear the truth, and the truth came easily. “Yes.”

“How do I know?” Anakin whispered. “How do I know you mean it?”

“How can I prove it to you?” Obi-Wan said, waiting for Anakin to look up at him again before giving him a sad, patient smile as he ran his thumb back and forth along his cheek. “What can I say?”

Anakin leaned into Obi-Wan’s hand, despair rising inside him. “I don’t know.” He turned his face into Obi-Wan’s palm with hesitant, apologetic kisses. “I just…”

 _I need you. So much,_  he wanted to say, struggling to find words that would match the deep, lonely ache in his soul. _I need--_

Isten splashing back into the river flashed through Anakin’s mind, his twin’s neck wreathed in bruises that Isten wore like a proud spill of jewels.

A chill of realization swept through Anakin, luscious and frightening in its potency. _I need to be yours._

“What is it?” Obi-Wan asked, aware of how still Anakin had gone under his touch.

Without looking away, solemn and nervous as a bridegroom, Anakin reached up to slowly pull Obi-Wan’s hand down from his face to his neck.

“Anakin?”

Wrapping his gloved hand over Obi-Wan’s, Anakin closed it so gently he could hear the faint hum of its servos as he pressed Obi-Wan’s fingers over his throat.

“Oh.” It was a simple, faint sound, as subtle as the pink stealing across Obi-Wan’s face and so quiet it was impossible for Anakin to read the feeling behind it. But Obi-Wan didn’t pull his hand away. He left it where it was over Anakin’s throat, caught between the heat of his skin and the cool leather of his glove.

Obi-Wan squeezed just enough to feel the lines of Anakin’s throat beneath his grip, to test the border of this strange new land the two of them had found themselves in.

Anakin sighed in approval, eyes fluttering shut at the spark of guilty pleasure the pressure brought.

 _He’s perfect,_  Obi-Wan thought with a rush of arousal and awe at the man before him: the way the dappled sunlight fell in streaks through Anakin’s hair and caught in his eyelashes, the muted glow of his power in the Force despite the shields he currently hid behind, the eager way he leaned into Obi-Wan’s touch with a soft whine of need. _So strong and yet so fragile._

“Is this what you want, Anakin?” he whispered cautiously, entranced by the wisp of movement against his palm as Anakin nodded with his eyes still closed. _He’s too embarrassed to look at me. How much of this does he want?_

Before Obi-Wan could think better of it, he spoke in that same confident, low tone they had first heard from Veris as the rain beat against the library’s windows what felt like a lifetime ago. “Anakin. Look at me.”

Anakin’s eyes snapped open, pretty and blue and wide with desire, full of the same need Obi-Wan felt racing through him at how quickly Anakin had responded.

He squeezed Anakin’s throat a little more, throat dry but voice calm and steady. “Tell me. Is this what you want?”

Anakin bit his lip and Obi-Wan glanced away, flushing with a surge of shame and lust at the unconscious act. _Mine._

_He wants to be mine._

_And I could make him mine in so many ways._ Obi-Wan closed his own eyes, fighting for control against the greed howling to life inside him, the depth of feeling that had frightened him out into the rain weeks before.

“Please?” Anakin begged, and Obi-Wan was painfully aware of how close they both were to tumbling out of control. _I must be the cautious one, the thoughtful one._

“Tonight,” Obi-Wan said, opening his eyes to meet Anakin’s pleading gaze with a firm expression that took all of his concentration to maintain. _I love you so, dear one. I will do anything you need. Be anything you need. But we must tread carefully._

_For my sake as well as yours._

Once again, Veris’s commanding tone came easier to him than he would have imagined possible. “We will not rush this, Anakin. You are too precious for that.”

To Anakin’s shy nod, he reluctantly stepped back, the fine tension of the moment broken as his hand slipped from Anakin’s throat and the afternoon swirled back in around them in warm greens and blues.

They walked in silence for the next hour while the sun slid lower, Obi-Wan letting Anakin take the lead in an aimless hike to the wreck and back to the camp again.

A strange, beautiful anxiety hung between them, deepening with the golden shadows of the forest growing all around them.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Hey, I got this done in just over the three weeks I said I would try to do. Woo hoo! What did you think? Any bets on how this will all end?
> 
> Hopefully I can catch up on comments this week. Thank y'all as always for your support of my writing! <3 <3 <3 It has always been a bright spot since my health issues began last fall.


	17. Home

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I live! And May the 4th be with you! :)
> 
> So here it is, the NSFW second-to-last chapter of Equinox. I will be updating The Devil's Own next and then coming back for the final chapter of Equinox, so it will be at least a month, possibly longer, before I update here again. 
> 
> Health issues have made things go much slower recently, and kept me from keeping up with comments, but I love and hoard all of them like a dragon. THANK YOU! 
> 
> And thank you as always for reading: I hope you enjoy! <3 I'd love to hear your thoughts and reactions to this chapter. How do you think it will all end?

Veris watched Obi-Wan leave with both amusement and annoyance as silence returned to the riverbank, the storm of Anakin’s emotions receding into the distance along with the cause of them until the vibrance of the forest hid him entirely. _The boy is beautifully wild, Obi-Wan, but he is unbalanced. The longer you wait to rein him in the worse he will get._

He looked down at the cracked datapad screens, unable to help a small smile as he thought about Anakin breaking them in one sweep of his hand. _Stars, the power in that anger…_ The rich scent of flowers had accompanied the sudden, vicious, and to Veris intoxicating snarl in the Force Anakin had strangled the devices with, and he wondered to himself what that meant. _Something blooming up the river and caught on the breeze at the right moment, or the blooms I imagined within Anakin’s spirit earlier?_

“You liked that.”

Veris looked up to find Isten standing before him, tying the waist on his pants with sharp, annoyed motions. “Pardon, Isten?”

“You liked it when he did that.” Isten gave him a mulish frown, damp skin and hair glistening in the dappled sunlight overhead. “When he broke those.”

 _And now you’re riled up, too._ Veris sighed and shook his head. “It took me by surprise, is all. Will you fix them for me?”

“No.” Isten folded his arms, glaring off into the woods in the direction of the faint spark of the Jedi that burned in both their minds. “They can’t be fixed anyway.”

It was Veris’s turn to frown. _Something has rattled him, something beyond Anakin’s tantrum._ “Isten? Are you all right?”

“No! I don’t know! What if, I don’t know, I mean… what if he had done that to your neck instead of the data pads?”

Shocked, Veris said nothing to this, unable to fathom the idea of any Anakin willfully trying to harm him, and Isten spat out a curse, no more eloquent when angry than Anakin was. “First hell, Master! Didn’t you feel that? What he did?”

“He... is more powerful than us, possibly even in the dark, Isten.” _Isten is afraid for me_ , Veris thought with affection. _Oh, my beautiful boy. We will be safe. Even if he is stronger than us in the dark, being the strongest means nothing if you cannot control it._

“I don’t like it. I don’t like this. He can use the dark too easily for a Jedi. I don’t know, just, I don’t like it.” Isten shoved his arms through his undertunic and then the one that went over that, glaring down at the ground as he folded the black garments into place and reached for his belt.

Veris watched, noting how Isten didn’t bother lining up the collars like he usually took the time to do. “We did come from them, Isten. You’re more upset at how I reacted, dear one. Aren’t you?”

Isten mumbled something, only nodding when Veris repeated the question.

Veris waited until Isten finished with his belt and reached out to take his hands in his own. “Isten, Isten...” He kissed the back of one hand and then the other as the river drifted past behind them in murmuring waves. “There is no need to be jealous.”

“Yeah, there is. There always is.”

Veris reached out through the Force and twined his aura with Isten’s, surprised to find how much Anakin’s outburst had thrown him. A newborn fear of Anakin wound through Isten’s complex tangle of jealousy and anger, so subtle it was almost subconscious: an instinctive wariness Isten was unable to put into words.

Anakin was no longer to be trusted, that feeling said, even if Isten couldn’t precisely explain why.

“Come here, dear one.” Veris pulled his reluctant lover into his arms. “Why don’t you tell me which planet you’d like me to take you to first once we are free of this place, hmm?”

As they fell into the quiet, stilted beginnings of conversation, Veris continued to reassure Isten with soft touches of his spirit and the dark that felt like home to both of them. _I love you so,_ he promised again and again until the worst of Isten’s unease eventually dissipated, ink vanishing into the midnight of Veris’s soul.

When they eventually returned to the campsite, Veris was pleased to find it empty, and even more so when Anakin and Obi-Wan returned only briefly at dusk to eat before setting off once again. Neither pair wanted to be around the other at the moment, it seemed, and Veris did not mind given Isten’s moodiness.

He took up first watch as usual as evening fell into night and the moons floated up above the trees like silver ghosts, Isten settling into a restless sleep beside him.

 

* * *

 

In a little clearing closer to the wreck than the campsite, an enclave of lush grass fringed by branches tapering out far overhead, Obi-Wan was studying his own lover with the same patient half-smile Veris often gave Isten. “I owe you a speeder bike? Are you sure?”

He sat in the middle of the clearing, Anakin sprawled on the ground next to him and shadows lying heavy and rich over them both.

“Yeah. Remember? We were playing sabbac with the men, waiting for our pick up. It was on that planet with the purple trees. You didn’t have anything to put in the pot.” Anakin’s head rested in Obi-Wan’s lap, his eyes on the stars flickering through the canopy above and gloved hand combing through the grass next to him. “So I covered you and you never paid me back. With interest, that’s easily a speeder bike by now. Just buy me one and we’ll call it even.”

“I see,” he nodded in mock seriousness. “An oversight on my part, to be sure. What color would you like?”

“No, no, the correct question is ‘What model would you like, Anakin’?”

“I know better than to ask that. You’ll want that death trap bike you’re always talking about. The Ion-whatever it is.”

“You know it.”

It had been a strange evening, full of light, casual talk about anything but what had happened earlier and where they were now.

Anakin had found the clearing awhile back while foraging, he had told Obi-Wan earlier, but the conversation had quickly wandered back to ships and home and how bored Rex must be waiting on the edge of the system to come get them.

 _I don’t want to go back to the river. Not tonight_ , Anakin thought to himself with fresh embarrassment at the memory of the data pads snapping and creaking in on themselves. _I don’t know what came over me. I just wanted them gone._

“So what color should the death trap be?” Obi-Wan asked.

“Don’t tease me like that.” It felt good to be hidden away in the dark of the forest, the sound of insects chirping in the balmy night air and his head against the firm weight of Obi-Wan’s legs. _We are here. We are together._

Obi-Wan trailed a hand through his hair, the other lying relaxed against his chest. “Tan and ecru it is, I suppose.”

Anakin grinned and after a moment of thought glanced back up at him from where he lay. “Is there a bike you want?”

Obi-Wan shook his head. “No. Not really.”

“Is there anything you really want?”

“I…” Obi-Wan paused to consider the question, the faint shift of the shadows along his brow showing it had caught him by surprise.

Anakin raised his hand to lazily twine his fingers with Obi-Wan’s atop his chest while he waited, curious to see what he would say. _A high-end speeder? A bigger room at the Temple?_

“This.” He squeezed Anakin’s hand. “This is nice.”

Anakin fought a flush of embarrassed pride, glad for the moonlight that reduced everything to pale greys and blues. “Really?”

He lifted his hand into the air, fascinated by the slow way Obi-Wan traced the long lines of his fingers. The answer came not in words but in the play of Obi-Wan’s hand along his own: tender, silent affection from the same man who Anakin had witnessed brutally slash his way through battle time and time again.

 _Are you not mine? Am I not yours?_ each touch said in warm brushes of their fingertips and palms together.

A new heat was building between them in the loneliness of the forest, and it was a long while before Obi-Wan spoke, the two of them lost in the pleasant, sweet tension between them.

“Anakin?” he asked, almost too quiet to be heard.

Anakin sat up and lazily crawled into Obi-Wan’s lap with a smirk that was almost shy despite the way he straddled him. “Yeah?”

Obi-Wan welcomed him with a kiss before he spoke. “Do you still want… that?” The bond between them remained closed, Anakin still too embarrassed to open it again, but the edge of anticipation in Obi-Wan’s voice left no question as to what he meant.

“Yes,” Anakin whispered against his cheek, leaning down to kiss him again and arms sliding around Obi-Wan’s shoulders. “Yes.”

“I don’t want to hurt you.”

“You won’t. Even... even if you do.”

“Anakin...” Obi-Wan pushed him back with the barest of pressure, and the word hung between them as Obi-Wan stood back up, the last of his resistance fragile and balanced on the finest of points.

“Please?” Anakin resisted the urge to pull Obi-Wan back down and instead slid his legs beneath himself to kneel in the grass.  

Looking up at Obi-Wan, Anakin bit his lip anxiously, unsure of what to say until the moment the words came out of his mouth, soft and pretty as the starry night crowning the man standing over him. “Please… Master?”

Obi-Wan’s shoulders tensed into a rigid line in the moonlight.

A thrill passed through Anakin as he curled his hands into his lap and he bowed his head: Obi-Wan’s aura sang of guilty elation, so like Anakin’s own desire, hungry and bright. Anakin would not be refused, he knew at that moment. He would not be ignored, or turned away, or judged for what he wanted.

He let out a single, happy sigh of anticipation as Obi-Wan tangled a hand in his hair and carefully pulled back.

“Look at me,” Obi-Wan demanded, entranced by the immediate flick upward of eyes made indigo by the night and the long, lovely throat he had exposed pulling Anakin’s head up.

Anakin was on his knees before him.

Anakin, stronger in the Force than anyone Obi-Wan had ever met, with more than enough pride and temper to match that power, had knelt to him. Called him “Master” with a vulnerable, luscious ache that rolled like thunder through Obi-Wan’s blood.

Neither could have said how long they remained like that, Obi-Wan staring in fascination down at the wavy locks of Anakin’s hair caught in his fingers, Anakin beginning to understand the terrifying beauty that lay in giving himself wholly to another.

“Remove it,” Obi-Wan finally said, letting his hand trail down to tug at the back of the collar on Anakin’s undertunic, the only layer Anakin had bothered to wear once the weather had warmed.

His gaze still on Obi-Wan, Anakin undid his belt and set it aside before he slid out of the garment. He dropped it in the grass off to the side of them in a whisper of linen while Obi-Wan watched the play of light and shadow across Anakin’s bare shoulders and chest as he returned his hands to his lap and bowed his head once again.

_He means it. He will do anything I say tonight._

Obi-Wan drew a sharp breath laced with the evergreen of the forest around them and fought a giddy flash of vertigo _. He is mine tonight._

He held out a hand and pulled Anakin’s belt up to him with the Force, pleased at the way Anakin glanced up but then quickly returned his gaze to the ground. It would have been disconcerting if Anakin had perfectly sank into rote obedience, but the slight shift of his chin up and then down again made the submission all the more arousing because it suggested this willing sort of surrender was new to him. This was something he wanted, something he was trying his best at, but ultimately something he didn’t know quite how to do yet.

Obi-Wan unclipped Anakin and Isten’s sabers and used the Force to let them drift to the ground atop the tunic while he pulled the narrow central belt out of the loops of the larger one in a hiss of leather against leather. Tossing aside the wider piece and its requisite pouches, he ran his fingers over the smaller belt, testing not only the strength of it but his own willingness to go forward with the idea that had sprung to mind. “Anakin?”

“Yes... Master?”

The muted, anxious whisper erased the last of Obi-Wan’s doubt: Anakin’s only fear was that Obi-Wan would stop. “Put your hands behind your back.”

Anakin did without hesitation, crossing his wrists in a slide of the bare skin of his left arm against the gloved weight of his right. _Is Obi-Wan really going to…?_ he wondered in nervous awe as Obi-Wan moved out of sight behind him.

Against the constant background static of the Force from the forest around him, Anakin was aware of so many small things: the blades of grass against his bare feet, the rustle of Obi-Wan’s clothes as he knelt behind him, the feeling of the night air across his shoulders and chest.

He felt the wisp of fingertips against his left wrist and then the cooler, heavier weight of leather slide across his skin. Lulled by the gentle touches of the belt as Obi-Wan threaded it around his wrists, Anakin’s eyes began to drift shut in pleasure when a set of hard, quick jerks on his arms sent a violent wave of arousal through him at the understanding Obi-Wan was tying the knot off.

And then nothing.

Anakin could feel Obi-Wan watching him as he sat there in the grass, could sense through the Force the growing lust stalking the edges of his mind and body, but Obi-Wan did not speak or touch him again as he knelt there. All Anakin could do was focus on the belt, a common thing he himself wore day in and day out now coiled and digging into his wrists just enough he was aware of it.

“Stars, you’re beautiful,” Obi-Wan said with quiet reverence. He touched the back of Anakin’s neck and traced a finger down his spine, the gesture as adoring as the words.

Anakin stared at the ground, wide-eyed, as Obi-Wan caressed his shoulders and arms. _What is he doing?_ He had expected, with both anxiety and anticipation, to be used and used roughly, as he imagined Veris used Isten. And while Obi-Wan’s aura glimmered with that dark potential, it remained below the horizon of their bond.

For now, Obi-Wan seemed content to simply touch him, to look at him, and Anakin tried not to squirm while he took his time doing so. To be admired like this, in such an intimate and intense way he was now powerless to stop, was new and almost frightening. “Please…” he whispered when he couldn’t bear the light sensation of fingertips against his skin any longer. “Hurry…”

Obi-Wan’s only answer was a murmured, “Patience, dear one,” and a kiss pressed to the back of Anakin’s neck, one that burned hotter than all of the affectionate touches before it as Obi-Wan stood and returned to stand before him.

Anakin looked up with shy need and embarrassed lust, wondering how he looked to Obi-Wan, wondering if Obi-Wan liked what he saw. He was helpless, not because he did not have the strength to force his way out of the leather binding his wrists if he had to. He was helpless because he had chosen to be.

It was intoxicating. _Is this... what... Isten was talking about?_

All he had to do was listen to Obi-Wan’s impassive commands and obey them, and as Anakin did his world began to narrow to the elegant tones of a Coruscanti accent and the physical sensations of his own body. The constant hiss of the Force around him had faded for an instant each time Obi-Wan had jerked on the belt to tie it, and Anakin craved more of that exquisite, fleeting stillness.

 _More. I need more. Please._ “Please…”

“Shh…” Obi-Wan made him stand, slipping his hand around Anakin’s throat. He left it there, entranced by the way Anakin’s eyes fluttered shut when he gave the barest squeeze, the desire that surged behind Anakin’s closed end of the bond at the subtle play of pressure and heat.

He tested that lust in an ebb and flow of strength and will, tightening his grip, loosening it, pulling Anakin close to him, giving commands that were strangely arousing given how simple they were. _Be quiet. Be still_ , he whispered as he slid his hand away from his throat to rest once again in the silk of Anakin’s hair.

And Anakin was.

He burned with desire, nervous and pretty, but he did as he was told.

He remained perfectly still while Obi-Wan licked and sucked fresh pink blushes of bruises into life on his throat and chest. He didn’t speak until Obi-Wan told him to, until Obi-Wan made him say in trembling gasps how good it felt to have Obi-Wan touch him.

Anakin’s words tumbled from his lips into his lover’s as they kissed, pleas for more, but he did not struggle against his bonds with anything more than sweet impatience.

It was surrender, pure and true, trust given to Obi-Wan in a way more intimate than anything they had experienced before, and it stunned and aroused Obi-Wan just as much as it did Anakin.

“Look at me,” Obi-Wan murmured when Anakin’s gaze fell away in flushed embarrassment as Obi-Wan stroked him through his pants, his other hand resting atop the rough knot of leather behind Anakin’s back. “Shall I continue?”

Anakin’s eyes darted back to him, silver in the night and wide with pleasure. “Yes. Please, Master.” _Don’t stop. I need you. So much. Please._

Without looking away, Obi-Wan stopped touching him just long enough to yank the strings of his pants loose, sending them to fall in a pile around his ankles. “What shall I do to you next?” he wondered aloud, curious to see what Anakin would say.

He dragged his thumb along the tip of Anakin’s cock, earning a trembling moan from Anakin but no coherent response as Anakin tried to think past the haze of his own lust and hunger for attention. Obi-Wan waited, enjoying the feel of Anakin’s cool, leather-bound wrists in one hand contrasting beautifully with the hot, thick weight of his erection in the other as he played with it. “Tell me what you want, dear one.”

Anakin’s cheeks reddened at the first thought that came to mind, a fantasy lingered over in the small hours of more than one night before guilt and confusion had pushed it away.

“Hmm?”

“No… I… It’s… it’s embarrassing...”

“Tell me,” Obi-Wan repeated more sharply, not at all angry but curious to see what reaction Anakin would have to a more demanding tone.

The answer came so swiftly Obi-Wan had to bite back a pleased laugh out of fear Anakin might mistake it for mockery. It was not a word, but an image Anakin risked before slamming his side of the bond closed again, and Obi-Wan’s satisfaction shifted into interest: a half-imagined Anakin bent over a table, whimpering in pleasure to the rise and fall of someone’s hand as they stood behind him. _He’s being spanked._

_My stubborn, willful, prideful Anakin... wants me to punish him?_

Anakin froze as Obi-Wan studied him with widened eyes, afraid he had been too honest, the peace that had started to wash in over him swirling away into panic. “I’m sorry. I’m sorry, I shouldn’t have--”

“On your knees.” Obi-Wan tilted his head, voice unreadable. “Now.”

Anakin lowered himself, heart pounding, bare legs sinking down against the cool grass. Every sound, every sensation coursed through him on the high of adrenaline. Obi-Wan’s saber clinking against his own belt as he knelt next to Anakin. A warm hand splayed against Anakin’s back, slowly pushing him forward, Obi-Wan’s tunic sleeve falling to brush against his skin.

“Do not apologize for honesty.” Obi-Wan paused, searching for the right words. “I like it when you are honest.”

“Yes, Master.” He stared out across the clearing as he bent over, his shoulders and cheek coming to rest against the ground, breathing fast and shallow at how vulnerable he was completely exposed like this.

“Will you be honest with me? Without apology?” He could feel Obi-Wan’s hand come to rest on his ass, cupping the curve of it, palm hot against his skin.

“Yes.”

“Good. Tell me what you have done to deserve punishment.”

“I…” _Everything._ Anakin struggled to form words as the realization hit him, harsh and unexpected. _You are so good and patient and kind to me and I don’t listen to you. I don’t respect you. I’m selfish. I’m defective. I never do anything right._ Everything was all at once too intense, the shadows too dark, the rustle of the woods too loud, the Force rolling back in to deafen him. “I don’t listen to you,” he managed to say. “I disobey your orders and--”

“True.” A light, stinging smack landed across his ass. And then another. Harder.

Squirming in surprise against the leather that bit into his wrist and the unfeeling weight of his right arm, Anakin let out a half-moan, half-whimper of lust and stunned relief. There had been no anger in Obi-Wan’s voice, only acknowledgement. A certain satisfaction.

“Is that enough, do you think?”

 _No. Don’t stop._ “If… if you feel it is... Master,” he managed to whisper into the grass even as he strained his hips upward against Obi-Wan’s hand.

“I don’t think it is. Is it?”

A harder swat landed, startling him. The awful fear gnawing at Anakin retreated, replaced by a sudden understanding that Obi-Wan knew what he wanted and was warming to the idea himself. “No. No, Master.”

“That’s right. Now be still.”

Naked and bent over, arms bound behind his back, Anakin could only focus on the steady, bittersweet rhythm as Obi-Wan continued, his master’s own excitement betrayed by the quickening pace of his breathing.  

For Anakin there was only his own body now, his aching erection heavy between his thighs, his arms sagging in dazed lust into their bindings, the heat where Obi-Wan struck him again and again humiliating and entrancing all at once. All thought, all worry, was gone.

Even the dull noise of the Force all around Anakin began to slip into silence, carried away first by the pretty jolts of pain as Obi-Wan spanked him red and then by the delicious agony of bacta-slicked fingers working inside of him one by one. _Yes, yes…_ he wanted to beg as Obi-Wan continued playing with him, but every time he drew breath to speak nothing would come. There was only panting and the awe of how still his mind had gone.

A groan escaped him as Obi-Wan at last ground his hips against Anakin, the thick length of his cock resting atop the swell of Anakin’s reddened, slick cheeks. Anakin shuddered, hands clenching behind his back. Here he was, tied, punished, naked, but there was only pleasure beneath the pain.

Pleasure and contentment, a dawning certainty that this was where he belonged.

Under his master’s hand, crying out for more.

 _Make me yours_ , Anakin begged, shivering beneath Obi-Wan as Obi-Wan began to push the blunt, hot weight of himself inside.

 _I will_ , came the hungry, barely-controlled reply, and Anakin gave another whimper of pained delight as Obi-Wan shifted his hips, forcing more of his cock into him. It took time for them to find their rhythm, both so desperate for each other, but when they did Obi-Wan’s moans carried loud across the clearing while the grass muffled Anakin’s whimpers.

 _So good..._ Obi-Wan sent across the bond, drunk on the feeling of Anakin beneath him, of the sight of Anakin bound and helpless and so very willing to take whatever Obi-Wan gave him. “Oh, my beautiful boy,” he gasped between thrusts, “so good, so good for me, aren’t you?”

“Master,” Anakin moaned with fragile, keening need, and he felt the last bit of Obi-Wan’s restraint give way in a violent surge of desire through the Force.

 _Mine_ , Obi-Wan growled almost incoherently through the bond, his booted feet sliding to rest in the dirt and Anakin’s shoulders pressed hard into the grass as they ground against each other for a delirious eternity. _Mine. You are_ **_mine_**.

 _Yes, yes…_ Anakin cried back, unable to think of anything but how deep Obi-Wan was inside of him, how tight Obi-Wan’s one hand felt stroking his cock while he grabbed his hip so hard with the other it would leave bruises later. _Yours, always yours…_

_Good boy. My good, sweet boy..._

Anakin came in a hot white stutter across the ground, his thick, hoarse cries of orgasm echoing through the meadow.

He knelt there, pretty ass in the air and hands twitching blindly behind him, unable to do anything but take Obi-Wan’s thrusts in mindless ecstasy with the scent of grass and soil sharp in his lungs. _You feel so good, Master, so good..._

Obi-Wan’s fingers tightened against Anakin’s reddened cheeks, a guttural, rasping cry signaling his own release as his hips slapped against Anakin’s before he gave a last shudder and slumped forward over him.

Anakin let out a weak, sated mewl at the sticky heat trailing down his thighs and the kiss Obi-Wan planted on his back before sliding away. The only sound after that for a long while was their panting, and then the clink of the metalwork on Anakin’s belt as Obi-Wan fumbled with the knot, fingers clumsy with bliss as he untied his lover and sank to the ground with him.

 

* * *

 

“Did I hurt you?” The first whisper between them, the first words after, laced in darkness and musk.

“No,” came the equally quiet reply as Anakin took Obi-Wan’s hand in his and laced their fingers together. They lay facing each other, shadows sprawled and unsure of where one ended and the other began.  “I’m all right.”

“Are you sure?” Obi-Wan concentrated as best he could given the situation, quickly finding a spark of angry, seething violet lurking underneath the skin on Anakin’s wrist. “Let me heal that. It’s going to bruise.”

“No. I want it to bruise.” Anakin pulled his hand away with a tired smile.

“...You do?”

“It means, I don’t know.” Anakin shrugged, tracing the line of his wrist with his gloved hand just enough to bring the sting to the surface. “It means you were thinking about me then. Only me.”

“Anakin,” Obi-Wan sighed with weary fondness, pulling Anakin’s hand to his lips to place kisses along his knuckles. “Don’t you know by now? I am always thinking about you.”

“Really?”

“Yes.”

Anakin beamed, exhausted and happy, and Obi-Wan knew that, for once, Anakin believed him. To Obi-Wan Anakin’s aura felt as calm as a lake at midday, reflecting wisps of sunlight across azure depths. _Balanced. He feels balanced._

 _Amazing_ , Obi-Wan thought to himself, tracing a finger along Anakin’s collarbone. The tentative peace would not hold: already Obi-Wan could feel mundane reality pulling Anakin’s attention back to the world around him. But that made the feat no less impressive. “How do you feel?”

“Good. Quiet.” Anakin kissed Obi-Wan’s knuckles in return. “A little cold.”

“Here.” Obi-Wan sat up and shrugged his outer tunic off, wrapping it around Anakin’s shoulders, and that was the last either said for some time. They cleaned up at a tiny creek they had passed on their way to the clearing, content and silent, dressing in the dark with lazy, satisfied motions.

“You only have one layer on,” Obi-Wan teased, running his hands along the front of Anakin’s undertunic as Anakin put both his and Isten’s saber back onto his reassembled belt. “How is your collar pulled apart already?”

“It’s a gift.”

“Is that what we’re calling it?”

“That’s what you call it.”

Obi-Wan pulled him in for a kiss, and before Anakin slid away to start the walk back Obi-Wan’s arm tightened around his waist, a sudden certainty stealing through him that something was about to go wrong. “Anakin?” he asked, worried despite the peace of the woods around them. “Are we… was that… alright? What I did to you?”

Anakin stopped himself from blurting out a reassurance and did his best to think seriously about the question, leaning back into him. “Yeah. I liked it. A lot,” he finally said, face pressed against Obi-Wan’s throat to hide a faint blush.

“You don’t think less of me? For what I did?”

“No,” came the mumbled reply, warm words against his collars.  “You don’t think less of me?”

“Of course not.” Obi-Wan stroked Anakin’s hair, trying to soothe himself as much as Anakin as they held each other close. “You trusted me. Completely.” _Please do not let me have ruined this with my selfishness... I love you so, Anakin_ , Obi-Wan wanted to say, but no more words would come out.

The vague, uneasy feeling lingered in Obi-Wan’s mind despite the satisfied haze his body floated in, but when they returned to the campsite nothing seemed amiss. Isten was still asleep and Veris seated cross-legged by the fire, and the two Jedi settled down to rest on their side of the fire without speaking.

 

* * *

 

In the dim gray of the hour before true dawn overtook the forest, Obi-Wan awoke to the sound of a harsh click familiar and strange at the same time. _What sort of insect is that?_ he wondered, groggy, before placing it as the ping of Anakin’s comm signaling an incoming transmission.

Anakin was already awake, usually the one to take last watch, but he was staring at his arm as if he was having trouble placing the sound too. Tapping his comm as Veris and Isten sat up, yawning and stretching, Anakin cleared his throat. “Skywalker.”

“Apologies for the early comm, General, if we have the rotation of your planet right, but I thought you and General Kenobi would like to hear the news as soon as we did.” Rex’s voice was crisp and professional as always, but the hint of excitement gave away what he was about to say. “We’ve been given final clearance and as soon as the documents are delivered to the correct parties we’ll be on our way. ETA 48 standard hours.”

“About time,” Anakin joked, catching Obi-Wan’s eye, and in that moment Obi-Wan knew they would be all right. A few weeks or a few months apart was much less frightening now that Anakin understood how deeply Obi-Wan cared about him, that grin said.

Obi-Wan couldn’t help smiling back as Anakin confirmed that their situation and location remained stable and signed off. _Time is nothing to love, dear one_ , he thought to himself, and gave a hopeful nod over to Isten and Veris.

The two said nothing, Isten once again turning into Veris’s embrace, but the Force lay as calm as it could around two Sith, and Obi-Wan was relieved to see it appeared the plan they had all agreed upon was going to remain in place.

_The sooner this all begins, the sooner it can be done. Anakin and I will be back at the Temple, and these two will be somewhere far away on the edges of the galaxy, lost in their obsession with each other._

The cold and unfeeling part of Obi-Wan, the clear-eyed Negotiator, wondered not for the first time if it was still necessary to allow the two Sith to live at all, but the answer returned the same as it had before. _They have made no move to harm us, and until they do no violence is deserved._

It made him uneasy to note there was a personal reluctance coloring a decision he preferred to think of as strictly moral, but there was nothing to be done about it and he accepted it as he tried to accept all of his conflicted feelings about the Sith. _I may be able to strike down a man with my own face, but oh, Anakin, I could never kill a man with yours._

The dawn and day that followed seemed longer than usual as time slid by, all four of them acknowledging the inevitable in their own ways. The Sith chose to leave and spend their last day together at the river while Anakin and Obi-Wan stayed behind at the camp and luxuriated in the simple touch of the other.

Anakin had yet to fully open his side of the bond again, but Obi-Wan did not push him on it, wondering if this was how Anakin was choosing to cope with their impending separation.

He did not mind. There had been times in the past they had retreated from each other, times they needed the stillness and privacy of their own thoughts without the distracting glow of the other.

They practiced together and ate together and sat close to each other as afternoon turned to dusk and the shadows of the Sith came back to join them by the fire and bed down for the evening.

 

* * *

 

 _One day almost gone,_ Anakin thought to himself sleepily as Isten woke him for his turn at watch in the middle of the night, a thoughtful frown twisting that bizarrely identical face before his twin crept back to Veris’s side and curled into his sleeping master. _One day to go before Veris and I leave this strange place._

Lost in memories and thoughts of all that had happened since the crash, Anakin passed the next hour idly watching the moons before a new idea occurred to him as the others slept on. _We still haven’t seen those pack animals. Not even once. When we were in the house or the woods._

_Maybe instinct’s keeping them away from the mansion. Or just from us, if they’re Force-sensitive in the slightest._

Anakin nodded to himself in the dark, folding his arms with a sigh of boredom. _I’m probably the one keeping them away. Either way, it’s stupid to keep watch at this point._

_Nothing ever changes here. The same forest. Same weather. Same stars._

_But I should stay awake_ , he reminded himself even as his body began to relax against the tree he sat leaned against, lulled by a sudden and powerful swell of confidence that bordered on smugness.

 _Nothing will hurt us,_ he found himself thinking with a lazy smirk. _Nothing can._

_Just another day or so until Rex gets here. Just another day or so to get all the sleep I can before we leave._

_And we deserve sleep._

His thoughts were sliding out of focus, feelings becoming stronger than words, and in the end the comfort of the body won out over the guilt of the mind. _Just a little more sleep. There’s a few hours of night left. Just wake up before sunrise, before the others._

A few minutes later, Anakin’s head sunk forward until his wavy hair fell in his face and his arms hung crossed limply in front of him.

Sleep stole over him, black and pure.

 

* * *

 

Anakin dreamed.

He was in the vast emptiness of a Tatooine night, walking in a desert that stretched out in a sea of silver beneath the three sister moons. There were no ships overhead or cities to be seen, only the stark wilderness all around and hiss of sand under his feet.

The unending sweep of the land terrified him as it did all those brought up in the hardscrabble cities of the barren planet. It was one of his earliest fears, being lost in the featureless wastes that crawled with monsters he had seen for sale at the markets and ghosts that the slave children whispered about after sunset.

The desert was death. To be here at night, alone and unarmed, was to die.

And yet here he was.

He had to go somewhere. It was important.

He could hear a woman singing somewhere far away. No instruments, just a simple melody half-heard on the arid winds that drifted between the broken hills and sprawling dunes.

_Come to me, Anakin. I have waited so long for you._

He walked onward, entranced and frightened. He knew that voice somehow, the tone and pitch of it, and desperately tried to remember where he knew it from without any success. It was hard to remember anything out here in the midnight waves of the desert.

_Come to me, Anakin._

As he went on, the stars slid across the sky and the dunes dwindled to hard-packed rock ringed with jagged hills. Time had no meaning, and every thought that pressed forward-- _Where is Obi-Wan? What am I doing here?--_ fell away the moment he heard another wisp of the song. It was so soothing, the way it pulled him, the way it calmed him.

He walked on for what could have been minutes or hours or days, but the twin suns he had grown up under never rose. If anything, the night deepened around him until the stars almost hurt to look at for the splinters of ice they had become.

It was all right, Anakin thought to himself. The dark was a more comfortable place to be, its currents more familiar and less demanding than the day.

Than the light.

_Isn’t it?_

Anakin shook his head in confusion, unsure of where that idea had come from, and stumbled as he felt something soft give way under his boot.

He paused to find the crushed remains of a flower growing out of the broken pan of the desert.

In the dark it was hard to tell colors, but the bloom seemed too showy and large to be any of the modest little ones that dared the Tatooine climate a few times a year. Puzzled, he looked up to find another strange flower, different from the first, poking through the hard ground a little further away. And another, and another, a fine scattering of blossoms just above the rock and sand they had no right to grow in.

 _They’re beautiful_ , he thought, walking through the unlikely meadow up the gentle slope of a small hill. There was a thick cluster of them on the way up it, and he paused to kneel and run his bare hand through them in fascination. A lovely smell, rich and foreign, wafted up to him, and he did it again, releasing more of their scent.

His hand brushed something half-buried in the sand under the clutch of blossoms.

Confused, Anakin pulled, and there was a momentary resistance before the object came loose in his hand.

A jawbone.

He stood and threw it aside with a curse, hurrying onward, trying to forget the worn, dry touch of it against his palm. It didn’t matter, he tried to tell himself.

The only thing that mattered was the voice. He needed to get to that voice, the one calling to him in such hushed tones it was almost lost on the wind.

_This way, Anakin. This way._

Two more sprawls of greenery lay at the top of the hill, and Anakin studied them warily as he approached. A breeze ruffled the flowers and hinted at the forms beneath: blossoms growing through the sharp silhouettes of rib cages and shapeless mounds of rags that had once been clothes.

He looked up from the desiccated corpses ringed in moon-bleached colors to the view beyond, and his heart stopped in his chest.

The raider village lay down below.

He was looking down on it as he had long ago, from the same place he had once crouched and swore to save his mother.

 _No_ , he thought in horror.

Time had passed here as surely as it had for Anakin, it seemed, the huts long crumpled into ruin and the bodies he had left behind nothing more than broken heaps of bone glinting in the starlight. As his feet carried him down the hill in uncertain, hesitant steps, no need for caution or quiet now, he saw that flowers were growing through the skeletons.

Luscious, showy blossoms peeked up through the eye sockets of one skull, greeting him as he crossed into the remains of the village.

_Come, Anakin._

A flowering vine twined tightly around the fabric-wrapped bundle a larger skeleton still clung to despite the years and sand and flowers piled all around. He passed it with barely a glance, finally understanding where he was meant to go.

The ruins of the hut lay ahead, dark and unremarkable among others just like it, but Anakin knew this one better than any of them. So many flowers had somehow grown inside the hut they poured from the doorway like blood, their scent alien and overpowering in the emptiness of the desert night.

_Come to me, Anakin._

_No, please,_ he begged. _I don’t want to see. Please don’t make me see._

But he kept walking, his fear unable to stop him even as tears began to streak down his face.

_You know you belong here, Anakin._

The corpses woven with blossoms and strewn across the sand were forgotten now, and he barely remembered to step over them on his way to the gaping blackness where a flap had once hung over the hut’s entrance.

_You belong in the darkness._

Trembling, he reached up and inside the hut, through the cloud of blossoms now almost choking him with their fragrance. His fingers slid through petals and leaves and came to rest on something cold and hard in the doorway.

Not a skeleton, as he had feared. Not the shriveled body of his mother with her arms out, waiting for him.

Stone. A flat sweep of it.

_Welcome home, Anakin._

He awoke with a start, jerking his hand back, the scent of flowers still thick and oppressive in his lungs.

_How…?_

The library loomed around him, silent and black, the space in front of him especially so, and it took him a moment to understand that he stood before the giant carved relief that visually anchored the room.

There was something wrong with it, though, and it took his panicked mind a bit longer to grasp why the moonlight falling across the stone seemed to be hitting it wrong.

The hooded woman in the center of the carving was gone.

There were only the delicately rendered flowers that ringed the edge of the scene and the lines suggesting a garden receding into the distance, each one perfect and unbroken as if the relief had never been any different.

Something moved next to him, a shadow born of the Force rather than the moonlight.

_Oh, I have waited so long to leave this place. For someone strong enough to bear my garden._

Blackness shot through Anakin’s soul, terror filling him like water pouring into a drowning man’s lungs as he realized he couldn't move.

“No,” he whispered. “No…”

 _Be proud, desert child_ , the thing hissed in cold delight as he fell shaking to his knees.

_You are not useless like the rest._

Ice and pain flooded his mind, and he barely heard his own screams echoing out through the mansion’s long, empty halls.


	18. Strength

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This last chapter ended up being a monster at almost 12,000 words, so I've split it into two chapters. This is the first of two. I hope you enjoy, and I'll upload the next one within the next ten or fifteen minutes, just as soon as I can format it. Happy reading and hope you enjoy!

The three men sleeping around the campfire woke to a horrific shudder in the Force, one that rolled through them all with such power they stumbled to their feet gasping and half-awake. Veris had to catch Isten from pitching forward into the fire as he staggered up, and Obi-Wan yanked his saber free from his belt on instinct before he understood that there was no one there to fight.

They stared at each other and then off in the same direction into the darkened woods.

Toward the mansion.

Anakin was not there with them, but no one asked where he was. They all knew: the violent echo of release had left ghoulish impressions in its wake.

All Obi-Wan had felt coming from the estate was Anakin’s pain, and all he had glimpsed was something inhuman drowning Anakin before Obi-Wan’s mind had forced him to look away to protect his own sanity.

Veris had only been able to hold the connection a little longer, just enough to feel a familiar chill pass through him before he too had retreated back into the safety of his own mind.

In the time Before, when he and Isten had danced as shadows without true minds or will, the part of them that was not Obi-Wan and Anakin had been that awful cold, the glittering void of the abyss. Whatever artifact of the dark that had made them had not controlled them, had not told them what to do in any conscious way, but it had birthed them as surely as winter did frost.

Veris’s heart tightened in his chest as he recalled their first few days of life. _We reached out again and again, but nothing answered. Nothing could, we finally decided. Whatever made us was a mute, dumb thing, no more intelligent or focused than a shard of glass occasionally catching the light just right._

_But it was hiding from us. Just as invisible to us in the Force as we were to Anakin and Obi-Wan. Biding its time until it could worm its way far enough into Anakin to overwhelm him._

Obi-Wan’s shocked gaze met Veris’s as the Jedi tried to form a question, any question, but nothing would come.

 _Us becoming real was an accident_ , Veris realized with the same horror in his own eyes. _It did not ever want or need us. It wanted Anakin._

_The strongest of us._

Isten murmured something and Veris and Obi-Wan looked over to find him still staring off toward the estate. “What did you say, Isten?” Obi-Wan managed, voice dry.

“It means to kill us. All three of us,” Isten repeated in a shaky whisper. “It means to be the only one alive when the ship gets here.”

“What?” Obi-Wan grabbed Isten by the shoulders, barely remembering to holster his saber first. “How do you know that? What did you see?”

Isten hesitated, swallowing. “So much. It’s... it’s been trapped here. In the mansion.”

“What is it?”

“Something pulled from the dark. A long time ago.” Isten ran a hand through his hair, tugging on it in an attempt to focus on the words he wanted to say rather than the terrible meaning behind them. “But it likes it here in our world. It likes hurting. Killing. And it wants out. It wants off this planet.”

“What has it done to Anakin?” Obi-Wan shook Isten by the shoulders once and then again, unable to stop himself. “Tell me!”

“What Samal was too weak for,” Isten offered helplessly, shaking his head. “It’s... I don’t know how to explain it. It’s made a new home for itself in Anakin. It’s taken him over.”

Veris gave Obi-Wan a warning glare and slid between him and Isten to separate them, pushing a stunned Obi-Wan back out of reach. “That’s enough.” Veris lifted his chin, as angry and frightened as Obi-Wan but tone smooth as ever. “Is it coming here now?”

“Yes.” Isten leaned into Veris, collecting his thoughts as best he could. “Don’t you feel it?”

“No, dear one.”

Isten stepped back and lifted his head up with as brave a look into the woods as he could manage. “It’s left the house. It’s in the gardens.”

Veris turned to Obi-Wan, who stood perfectly still as he tried to let Isten’s earlier words inside enough to process them. “Give me my saber, Obi-Wan.”

“No.” He blinked, taking a step back. “You will not hurt him.” Obi-Wan muttered almost to himself as he let his hands fall to the two sabers on his belt. “I will not let you hurt him.”

“We can try to stop him without hurting him, Obi-Wan,” Veris said, as icily calm as Obi-Wan was upset. “Distract him. Knock him out. We’ll think of something. We’re good at thinking on our feet. You know that. But we only have two sabers between us right now and we don’t have much time.” He held out his hand, golden eyes narrowed. “I need my saber.”

“Swear you won’t hurt him.”

“This is madness. You felt the strength of what has possessed him!”

Obi-Wan’s tone only grew harsher. “Swear it.”

“On my word, I swear it.”

“No. On Isten. On his life.”

Veris scowled, his hand hanging in the air between them. “On Isten’s life, I will hurt Anakin no more than I have to in order to subdue him. Isten?”

“On my master’s life, I swear the same,” Isten murmured, bowing his head to hide the panic in his eyes as Obi-Wan reluctantly handed back his master’s saber, the two older men glaring at each other. _None of this matters. Obi-Wan and Veris couldn’t bear to even touch minds with Anakin for more than a few seconds before they both flinched away from what has him._

_They won’t stand a chance when that thing shows up wearing Anakin’s face._

_And I can’t beat him alone, even if I had my saber._

Veris and Obi-Wan muttered ideas back and forth as they all set off down the path and toward the lurid halo rising over the starlit woods like a black hole where the sun should be. Isten said nothing, stomach twisting into a bitter knot, as he fell in behind them.

 _We’re going to die_.

 

* * *

 

Anakin floated, scared and motionless, in a void that had no direction and no end. There had been a brief pulse of panic from somewhere outside of this place, the achingly familiar spark that was Obi-Wan’s mind, and then blackness had snuffed it out.

 _Obi-Wan, where is he? What have you done to him?_ he screamed without breath.

 _Nothing, desert child,_ the creature answered, and he felt its cruel tone sing through the bones and muscles he could just sense out in the waking world. _Nothing yet._

_I will kill you if you hurt him!_

Something like a laugh scraped along his mind, and a saying their shared minds allowed him to understand despite the guttural, unfamiliar language it was recited in. “ _The drowning man threatens the ocean even as his mouth fills with water.”_

Anakin let out another savage cry into the void and struggled to take control of his body, but it remained a frail echo, wisps of sensation from somewhere too distant to reach.

_Ah, you see how useless it is. How can one who has merely succumbed to the dark overcome one born of the dark?_

_I am a Jedi!_ Anakin managed, straining to focus on the steady movement of his legs and the muffled sound of cobblestones against his boots.

_For now. But you know the truth. There is an abyss threading the bottom of your soul, Anakin Skywalker. That is what I reached out to when you first arrived. It took so much effort, so much energy, but I planted my flowers and waited for them to grow, let them ready a home for me in your spirit._

Anakin fought back a grinding sense of vertigo and pressed his soul outward, willing himself to claw toward the last place he had sensed Obi-Wan as the voice continued with calm, merciless confidence.

_And now that you are mine, oh, there is so much darkness in you, the potential for so many horrors._

_In the end, for all of my careful nurturing, Samal lived barely a day as my new home when the time came._ There was a flash of remembered disappointment and rage, of blood and chaos, before it faded into a new, deep sense of satisfaction.

_But you, oh, you will last for years._

Vision and sound returned to Anakin in a flood of waving silhouettes and stars, the moonlit gardens rustling black all around him. He gasped and stumbled, but freedom lasted only a moment before the creature stripped him of control once again with the ease of a creche master righting an unsteady youngling.

_It has been so long, so long since I have been free to do as I please. I think your lover will die first, and then the shadows the two of you cast._

_No!_ Anakin howled in helpless fury, feeling himself walk down the main garden path toward the forest before his world sank back into the formless void he lay trapped in.

 

* * *

 

Obi-Wan walked through the dim cathedral of the forest with the heavy weight of his unlit saber in his hand and Veris equally silent beside him. There had been no definite plans made in the end, nothing worth trying to follow because nothing had felt even remotely possible in the face of that awful tide of the Force cresting somewhere up ahead of them. There was a vague agreement Obi-Wan and Veris would try to disarm Anakin while Isten would circle and look for a chance to steal a saber, but while such nebulous ideas had worked in the past on the battlefield, they seemed hopeless in the face of what awaited them.

Earlier, Veris had tried to send Isten back the other way into the wilderness, with the logic that he was unarmed, and that if Veris and Obi-Wan could hold Anakin back for long enough, in the end at least Isten might live long enough for the rescue ship to arrive. Isten had refused instantly and with a long, muttered string of curses Obi-Wan could only understand half of, returning to Basic periodically to drive home the point that he would not leave them to run and hide in the woods like a coward.

Obi-Wan gave a bitter smile into the night at the recollection of Veris’s stunned expression before the three had continued on their way toward the mansion. _Oh, Isten, there might be hope for you yet if you can survive tonight._

“It’s moved back. Into the gardens,” Isten murmured, moving closer to Veris.

“It wants to stay in an open space, then. Better for fighting,” Veris said to a nod from Obi-Wan, who looked away when Isten squeezed his shoulder before the Jedi strode to the front of their little group.

 _We’ll save him_ , the simple gesture meant. _Somehow._

Obi-Wan took a deep breath and let it out, attempting to find balance but tasting only dread despite the solemn beauty of the forest rising tall around them. “Can you feel him, Isten? Is he still…?”

“He’s still in there,” Isten answered quietly. “I promise.”

“Thank you.” Obi-Wan had not dared to touch Anakin’s mind again after the gruesome wave of emotions that had shocked them all awake. _I am sorry, dear one, I am so sorry but I can’t._

 _I have to be in control if I am to have any chance to save you._ He glanced over at Veris, at the ice in his own soul made real, and hated how familiar the cold look on Veris’s face was. _He is thinking the same thing. About Isten._

_Is he thinking it about Anakin as well?_

It was somehow easier for Obi-Wan to turn his thoughts toward the horror lying in wait far ahead, and as the trail began to curve gently around on the last leg toward the manor Obi-Wan tried to prepare himself as best he could for what form it would take.

The dark had grown into a pulsing, swirling mist all around them, a poison in the pleasantly warm night air, and he tried not to focus on what that meant, but it was impossible not to. _No Jedi could withstand that much dark energy untouched._

 _I… I must be ready for whatever I see, whatever awful form that thing will try to frighten me with_ . _Make Anakin seem a moving corpse, make him seem a monster, make him seem distorted and grotesque like the old holo pictures of Sith we younglings would frighten each other with late at night._

Obi-Wan closed his eyes for a moment and tightened his grip on his unlit saber, centering himself on the soothing coolness of the metal and the spark of the crystal housed inside. _I will save him. I will bring him back from whatever that thing has twisted him into. It is not too late. It is not too late_ , Obi-Wan repeated to himself, trying desperately to ignore the fear roiling inside him.

“Behind me, Isten,” Veris said, breaking the silence as the line of trees began to fall away down the path, the crisp silhouette of the distant mansion rising up in their stead. “Obi-Wan?”

“Yes?”

Veris spoke through the Force, words a cold reassurance. _You did not falter when you knew your master was already lost._ The old, old memory of a scowling, tattooed face close to his own rose and then faded just as quickly. _Do not falter when there is still hope for Anakin. For us._

There was no time for Obi-Wan to answer him: they came to the edge of the gardens, sweet and fragrant and lost in shadow, their beauty twisted by the dark lying heavy and thick all around.

Down the wide path, crowned by the moons and the house, stood a waiting figure that horrified Obi-Wan with its achingly familiar lines more than any nightmarish shape ever could have.

It was Anakin, tall and proud, his dear Anakin, head tilted back as if he were looking up at the sky, somehow immune to the evil tainting the air and his silhouette as sure and graceful as if he had been born to the dark.

“No… no…” Obi-Wan whispered, hand coming up over his mouth to fight back the nausea that swelled. There was only one way Anakin could stand unscathed, unbent, almost proud, in the middle of such darkness.

If enough of it were his own.

The shadow extended its hands to either side and twin lines of light hissed to life, the blue highlights of Anakin’s saber clashing against the red of Isten’s down Anakin’s face and chest.

He tilted his chin back down to face them with a lazy smirk, his eyes as black and featureless as the broken-out windows in the mansion behind him.

“Welcome home, Master,” the thing called out in Anakin’s voice.  

Veris and Obi-Wan lit their own sabers, their own halos of light and color jumping across the cobblestones, but Anakin remained still, empty eyes moving to each of them in turn.

 _Savoring_ , Isten thought with dread. _It’s savoring this moment. Our fear._

Isten reached out with his mind toward Anakin’s in desperation, remembering how subtly he had been able to brush against the thing’s consciousness with Obi-Wan in their strange, shared vision before they left the mansion. _There has to be a way to get it out of Anakin!_

Obi-Wan and Veris swung their sabers into the opening stance of Soresu, perfect mirrors of each other as their blades aimed at Anakin’s motionless form.

Isten took a few steps back, glad Anakin’s attention was turned elsewhere as he ghosted along the edge of the creature’s halo in the Force. There was a joy, deep and primal, at being free, and Isten tried to focus on that even as he felt his master and Obi-Wan tense for their first attack. _What is it free from? A person? Samal?_

 _No_ , he understood even as he asked. _The stone. That giant carving in the library._

Anakin’s unsettling gaze landed on Obi-Wan and his grin widened. “Surprised, Jedi? You shouldn’t be. He belongs to the dark. He always has. He always will.”

“Let him go.”

Isten tried to ignore the uncharacteristic bloom of unchecked anger in Obi-Wan’s words and hone in on the thing’s emotions.

_It wants off the planet. But more than that… it wants away? Away from the stone. Even now._

Anakin swung one saber in a spiral of blue and pointed it at Obi-Wan, addressing Veris in the harsh tones of the Sith language with only a subtle glance away from the Jedi to him. It took a moment for Isten to follow what Anakin said, the meaning of each word rising from his subconscious in a slow tumble.

“<Help me kill him, ‘little shadow’, and I will allow you and your pretty boy to live as my servants.>”

Veris did not waver, fingers extended gracefully toward Anakin below the red line of his saber. “<We serve no one, ‘Mother’.>”

“Anakin, please,” Obi-Wan called out. “You have to fight it!”

Isten pushed forward again against the edges of the creature’s mind as hard as he dared, praying he would not be noticed. _It hates the stone more than anything._

_It’s… it’s afraid of it._

Anakin’s empty eyes snapped to Isten, one last image rising in Isten’s mind before the thing’s sudden anger burnt it away: a black hole, yawning and inescapable.

Isten stood hypnotized as Anakin dove at him with a snarl and sabers out in lines of garish red and blue.

 

* * *

 

Veris knew what Anakin meant to do the second his grip shifted on Isten’s saber, but fear still wracked him as he slid between Anakin and Isten, whipping his saber up to catch the downward arc of Anakin’s attack and thrust it aside even as Isten stumbled back in surprise. _Close, too close!_

Anakin spun away and around just in time to block Obi-Wan and jump away before Veris and Obi-Wan could pin him between them. He landed atop the stone border of one of the taller beds and launched himself back toward Isten, attempting to barrel through the two older men to get to him.

The clash of sabers rang through the gardens, barrages of strikes almost too fast to follow, Anakin relentless in his pursuit of Isten but Obi-Wan and Veris able to repel him once and then again in dazzling bursts of light and sparks. He turned without warning and descended upon Obi-Wan after his third failed attempt, driving him back toward the woods as Isten hung back in frustration behind Veris.

The fight swirled through patterns as deadly as they were beautiful: Obi-Wan and Veris tried to pin Anakin down between them again and again, determined to wear him down with attacks from both sides, but neither was prepared for the viciousness the monster inside him fought back with.

For all of their skill with their sabers, they were holding back, trying to wear down or just wound an opponent intent on killing them, and every minute that passed gave Anakin the advantage as they fought their own instincts as much as they did him.

 _Anakin!_ Obi-Wan begged through the Force, the effort of touching the thing’s mind nearly costing him a leg as he leapt back from a wild swing almost a second too late. _Anakin, please! Come back to me!_

 _I can’t do this. I can’t kill you_ , he whispered across their bond. He had already passed up an opportunity for a killing blow, one he never would have hesitated to use on any other enemy. Anakin’s neck had stretched, bare and unprotected, for an agonizing second as he had twisted from blocking Obi-Wan’s blow to meet Veris’s swift attack.

Obi-Wan had not taken the chance, had not even considered the subtle tilt of his wrist it would have taken to end Anakin’s life, and the moment had passed, gone as soon as it had come.

_Anakin!_

The man Obi-Wan loved more than his own life only gave him an empty grin over the crackle of blades crossing again and again, the three men a storm of light and shadow.

_Anakin, fight, damn you! Fight!_

Something warm glimmered in the murk of the Force lying thick around Anakin, heat lightning at dusk, and the smile tilted into a scowl as he ducked a kick from Veris.

 _You can’t leave me!_ Obi-Wan cried through their bond even as his mind shuddered at the blackness flooding the other side. _I need you!_

_I love you!_

Anakin stumbled, the briefest hesitation in his footwork, and Veris jerked back on instinct before the crimson arc of his saber landed in the unexpected opening that appeared over Anakin’s stomach. It sailed harmlessly past, close enough to leave a wake of black ash through the delicate linen.

A fresh, wordless rage shot out through the Force from the thing inside him at the silver smoke of the burned fabric wafting into the night air.

There would be no more games, that fury howled: they had almost hurt its new body.

Veris had just enough time to turn back to Isten hanging a safe distance back, to send a few desperate words before Anakin was on him and Obi-Wan with renewed wrath. _Run. Now!_

Isten’s fists curled at his side, too frightened to argue. Veris and Obi-Wan were too slow, their fluid, shared style made rough and clumsy by emotion. They could hold their own for a while, he distantly noted, but it was clear they would lose in the end.

Veris would die.

And Obi-Wan.

He himself would die, and Anakin would live on enslaved by this creature for as long as it wanted him.

Fear choked Isten, thick and heavy, and in the midst of it a thought sparked strange and true. _It’s not like us. It’s not afraid of anything._

_Except the stone._

_That’s why it didn’t lure us into the mansion. It doesn’t want to be in there with the stone._

“Come on!” Isten shouted over the piercing whine of sabers, shoving the three apart with a quick, nasty push of the Force that took so much from him he staggered back from the effort. “Back to the house!”

Anakin dug his feet in to steady himself as he slid back, sabers down and dragging burn marks through the cobblestones, but the distraction bought all the time Isten needed as Obi-Wan and Veris leaped back to either side of him.

“Hurry!” he yelled, pointing down the garden path toward the mountain of black far behind them, the idea growing clearer in his mind. “Back inside!”

 

* * *

 

Obi-Wan knew something was wrong as they turned to flee: Anakin made no move to chase after them.

A quick glance back over his shoulder showed him that Anakin was walking after them, frightening eyes narrowed, but that was all.

Next to Obi-Wan, Isten only gave a breathless laugh, and then the only sound was their boots pounding down the path and the hiss of Obi-Wan and Veris’s blades swinging at their sides, lungs filling with ozone and the rich fragrance of flowers.

 _We have to get to the library!_ Isten told them, the sharp outline of the house rising up ahead.

Obi-Wan grimaced as a swell of the dark, heady and intense, rose in the murk that Anakin’s end of their bond had fallen into. He opened his mouth to warn the others, but it was too late: a tendril of the Force whipped around his throat and slammed him down into the cobblestones just as he and the others reached the wide landing atop the steps that led back into the house.

Only a choked gasp came out, and as he rose into the air, aware of his saber deactivating and rolling away even as he flailed for it, Veris and Isten’s panic flooded through him as Veris’s saber did the same.

The three of them were being lifted up into the air, just enough their feet brushed the ground, just enough to turn them back toward the gardens and the forest and the man walking toward them, wreathed in the black fire of the dark.

“That’s far enough,” Anakin muttered, sabers holstered and hands splayed out toward the men hanging in an ugly web of the Force before him. He curled his fingers into fists, the leather creaking on his glove, and all of them fell to their knees, scraping at the invisible pressure around their throats.

The ugly, hateful satisfaction radiating from the thing inside of him drained into anger as they continued to struggle, and he walked with distaste toward them, entering the little courtyard the paths opened up on to before the steps leading up into the house.

Obi-Wan fought to find the center of himself even as he slumped over onto the ground, the tiniest bit of hope rising as he realized the creature was tired. Exhaustion radiated from its unearthly halo surrounding Anakin, and while it could hold them pinned like this, if it wanted to kill all three of them it would have to get close enough to do so. If he could only pull his saber back to him, if he could only focus through the pain enough--

“Me first!” Isten spat from somewhere next to him, a silhouette coughing and hacking as he pushed himself up to an unsteady kneel. Veris was on the other side of him, just as helpless even as he gave a hoarse warning to Isten to be silent, but Isten ignored him. “Come on!”

There was something beneath Isten’s raw panic in the Force, an unnatural calm Obi-Wan knew intimately from his time fighting with Anakin. Isten had decided something, put all his bets on something anyone else would deem impossible, and nothing was going to stop him from finding out if today was the day the Chosen One’s luck gave out. _What are you doing?_ he called to Isten, knowing Veris was screaming the same, but Isten gave no answer back.

The determination in Isten’s voice only grew stronger. “Kill me first, Ugly.”

Anakin took a last few careful steps to stand in front of Isten, considering the trembling figure on his knees before him. “Trying to buy your precious master a little more time?”

Obi-Wan shut his eyes, will to fight flickering at his dear Anakin so callous and amused. _I cannot give up!_

“No. I just want one thing,” Isten answered, swallowing and refusing to look away from Anakin or acknowledge Veris thrashing against his own unseen bonds just a few feet away.

“And what is that?”

“No sabers. Do it yourself.” Isten stared up at Anakin silhouetted against the night sky, hands dug tight into his thighs as he tried to concentrate on his words through gritted teeth. “Come on, Ugly,” he said with an insane smile that dared Anakin to refuse him. “When was the last time you had a real pair of hands to hurt someone with?”

 _Isten, no!_ Obi-Wan cried, horrified at the perverse excitement in Isten’s question, the same mad glee Anakin had always faced death with.

“Do it! You hate me anyway!”

Anakin tilted his head, considering, and backhanded Isten, whipping his face to the side and sending the Sith over onto his hands and knees.

Veris gave a new, breathless howl against the Force woven tight around him, Obi-Wan begging Anakin to stop.

Isten only inhaled a ragged breath. “You can hit harder than that,” he muttered.

Anakin allowed the Force around him to loosen enough to let the Sith sit back up before Anakin kicked him in the stomach, sending him curling over to more shouts from Obi-Wan and Veris.

Anakin yanked him back up by his hair, kicking and punching him with careful, sadistic precision. The hits echoed against the walls of the house they stood in front of, dull thuds rising over the rustle of the gardens behind them.

Obi-Wan watched in despair, the agonized madness that had consumed Veris threatening the edges of his own sanity, as Anakin hauled Isten back up to a sitting kneel. Rage and terror drummed along Isten’s halo in the Force, but Obi-Wan couldn’t see any sane point in it. _Isten!_

“See how generous I am,” Anakin murmured, leaning in close, wrapping his hands around Isten’s throat and shaking his limp form back and forth. “Letting you die a slow, heroic death in the pathetic hope your master will be able to somehow free himself and escape while you do so. What do you say for my kindness, little shadow?”

Isten gave him a dazed grin, blood trailing from his nose. “Thank you.”

With one last burst of strength that made Obi-Wan cringe away from the raw anger in it, Isten shot his hand up around Anakin’s throat, the Force exploding in a blinding white between them.


	19. Going Home/Epilogue

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This is it! What started as a birthday present for DreamingMoonlight is finally done. :D I hope you've enjoyed, Moonlight, and all of my other readers who came along for the ride! Thank you so much to all of you for your kudos, comments, and support, especially with my recent epilepsy diagnosis and all the challenges that have come with that. 
> 
> Here it is, the conclusion to Equinox. I hope you enjoy, and thank you for reading!

Alone in the dark, Anakin’s legs gave out and he sank to his knees only to realize there was stone beneath his feet. Not the quick scrapes and impacts of his footwork out in the real world, or the sensation of standing still or falling to an injury out there, but a solid floor here, inside the nothingness he was trapped in. He scratched his hands out along it, looking up to find the barest outlines of walls and arches were coming into view. Not the house, nowhere he had ever been: the dim, austere lines gave a sense of an ancient place, strong and massive here but long tumbled into dust wherever it had once stood.

Something that might have been corpses littered the floor between graceful columns, irregular sprawls of misshapen shadows.

 _Anakin…_ a voice called from somewhere up ahead, too soft to identify. _Anakin!_

He pushed himself to his feet, resisting the urge to answer, and shrank back as a formless black shape drifted past in the gloom, moving from one column to another. _Anakin!_ it whispered, searching. Darkness radiated from it, hot and seething, smoldering against Anakin’s senses with the promise of violence at any moment.

 _Is it tired of me fighting it?_ Obi-Wan’s soul had breached the night, beautiful and warm against the cold Anakin floated in, for a moment, but when? A minute ago? An hour ago? There was no time in this place, but Anakin knew Obi-Wan was still fighting. _He’s still alive. I have to reach him._

He watched the shade vanish back into the shadows low and heavy all around them and steeled himself, unsure of what he would do but finding reassurance in how powerful his emotions felt here: righteous anger, disgust, fury. He gathered them up carefully, banked them against his fear, waiting for the monster to emerge once again and cross the hall. There was no doubt it was close, its evil energy now so strong it radiated all around and made it impossible to track.

 _I am a Jedi_ , he repeated to himself. _I will face this thing and free myself, whatever that means here. I have to._

_I have to save Obi-Wan._

“Anakin,” the voice sounded behind him.

He whirled, too late, too slow, to find the figure before him. It cast off the shadows it wore and rose into the air, glowing with the fire of a supernova and wings of embers and ash, halo threaded with onyx and molten gold. The room remained unlit, seemed to grow darker, even, despite the blinding aura surrounding the power distilled into the shape of a man.

Isten looked down at him, beautiful and terrible, and in what could have been a second or an hour held out his hand to Anakin with the somber motion of one deep in concentration. “I need your help, Anakin, to free you. I need your anger. Let me in.”

Anakin recoiled, staring in disbelief at the monstrous god before him. “No! I’m not like you! I won’t be like you!”

“I came from you!” Isten growled, hand shaking. “Hurry! This is our last chance!”

“I am not evil!”

“You ARE!” Isten seemed to grow taller, taller than the columns stretching up into the blackness, fury shaking the walls. “Give me your anger! Give me your hatred! Do it or we are all going to die! I can’t beat that thing out there without you!”

“I am a Jedi!”

“You are the son of Shmi Skywalker! Where did your being a Jedi get her? Where will it get Obi-Wan?”

Anakin snarled, slamming his mind against Isten’s with such force the whole hall seemed to shake, and a grim smile crossed Isten’s garishly lit face, one that did not reach his eyes. “There you are,” he murmured.

Anakin screamed in rage as the dark bloomed vast and incomprehensible all around them.

And found himself on his hands and knees gasping for air in the little courtyard where the garden paths met at the back of the house. He rolled over onto his back and collapsed there, taking long, shuddering breaths, hands scraping in disbelief at the rough stone around him and his own chest.

His body was his own again.

Anakin blinked, unable to reconcile that simple truth with another hanging just above him. The creature flailed in the air over him, a half-shadow in the Force, still fighting him even though he was already free.

 _No. It’s not fighting me._ Anakin sat up, groaning with the effort as Obi-Wan sank to his knees beside him and frightened relief pulsing through their bond. “Isten!”

Veris lay sprawled and dazed at the bottom of the steps, Isten on his knees at the top of them and fists curled against the ground, eyes shut so hard in concentration tears leaked down his cheeks. Isten channeled Anakin’s power alongside his own, forcing it around the monster, dragging it back toward him one agonizingly slow pull after another.

“You can’t kill it!” Anakin shouted at the Sith, sinking into Obi-Wan’s arms from exhaustion. “Stop!”

“Isten!” Obi-Wan shouted, not understanding anything he was seeing as he pulled Anakin close. “What are you doing?”

Isten did not answer him, eyes still closed and breathing quick and rough, and with a wail of fury the creature sank into his aura, black seeping like blood across charcoal. The gusts of the Force slowed around the four of them to an ominous spiral centered on Isten.

He stood, unsteady, his Force presence roaring wild and dark, a thousand storms trapped in the fragile glass of his body.

“Isten!” Veris cried, pushing himself to sit up from where he lay, and Anakin heard new fear in the Sith’s voice, fear that crawled along his own spine as Isten’s hand came out and his hilt shot in a rough tug from Anakin’s belt to land in his palm.

Obi-Wan froze at the movement, arms tight around Anakin. “No, Isten… no…”

Isten opened his eyes to reveal their familiar gold, and any relief Anakin felt that he had, for the moment, won out against the dark-side creature faded as Isten studied the hilt in his hand, considering it as if he had never seen his own saber before.

Veris crawled up one step and then another, gritting his teeth against the tides of the Force battering the night air, but Isten only canted his head to one side as if listening to someone.

 _We have to get out of here!_ Obi-Wan warned, trying to pull Anakin back toward the woods, away from this new, horrible threat, but Anakin shook his head and closed his hand over Obi-Wan’s.

 _Wait!_ Through the strange, fragmented link shaped by the sheer energy coursing between them, Anakin could hear the thing shouting at Isten.

 _Set me free! NOW!_ it bellowed at Isten over and over again, only getting mad laughter and curses in return. Isten stumbled back away from Veris to lean against the open doorway into the mansion. Shaking, Isten watched the creature turn his own hand with the unlit saber in it toward his own chest.

“No,” Isten hissed. “No!” He smacked his saber into place on his hip instead, raking his hands down his face as he struggled to stay upright.

_You think this pathetic body can hold me? I will grind you down to nothing and have Anakin back before the sun is up!_

Veris had dragged himself almost within reach and stretched out his hand up to Isten, but Isten took a step back into the house with a frantic shake of his head. “I’m sorry, Master. I’m sorry!”

“Isten, what have you done?” Veris cried.

Obi-Wan’s heart twisted at the realization of what Isten’s plan had been, the long-shot gamble that he would be able to imprison the creature within himself if he had Anakin’s help. _Oh, Isten,_ he wanted to cry in an echo of Veris’s own anguish bitter and thick in the Force between them.

“I had to try to save us. To save you, Master!” Isten whimpered, hugging himself and moving back further into the shadows of the doorway as Veris regained his feet and swayed, trying to find his balance amidst the raging tides of the Force around them.

“Isten,” Veris whispered, holding out his hands, and Obi-Wan closed his eyes, trying to send as much of his own strength to him as he could. “Please… don’t.”

 _It’s too late! For you! For them!_ the monster laughed, but Anakin heard a subtle uneasiness to its taunting, distinct and out of place in its supremely confident tone.

“No. Not for them.” Isten had been reaching out to Veris, but he let his hand fall back and straightened up, turning to look behind him into the darkened house.

“Isten!” Veris repeated, and Obi-Wan clenched his jaw at the grief radiating from him. “Isten, stop!”

He turned back and the loving, sad smile he gave Veris sent a chill down Anakin’s spine. “I told you, Master. I’m going to save you.”

The thing inside him roared, the shriek sending glass and wooden window panes crumpling up and down the landing, glittering shards falling to bounce out across the cobblestones.

Unfazed, Isten looked out toward Anakin and Obi-Wan crumpled together on the ground, as if just realizing they were there. “Take care of him. Please.”

The finality in his tone sent Veris lunging for Isten only to have Isten dance back into the gloom and slice his hand through the air. A tumble of debris lurched up from around him to block the way in, Veris’s hands landing on cold, unfeeling stone.

 

* * *

 

Isten turned from the warm velvet of the night outside, directing the raw, angry currents of the Force with the barest wave of his fingers to send half-rotten furniture and debris skidding down the hall to pile in more broken heaps in front of the door and the entries to the halls that ran along the outside wall on either side.

It would not hold off his master and their twins for very long, but he didn’t need very long.

 _Listen to me_ , the thing cautioned, the trace of alarm in it a perversely satisfying note for Isten as he walked carefully past the sliding pieces onward into the dark. _You see how powerful you are like this. You could be like this always!_

_You said you would grind me down to nothing before dawn._

It paused. I _made a mistake. You are stronger than I thought. You can handle Anakin’s darkness. And me. We could reach an agreement._

There was no need to turn on his saber to see where he needed to go: there was a new, unseen aura radiating from the library far deeper in the house, a pull that both fascinated and terrified him. _No. No agreements. I’m taking you back to your prison._

The thing let out an angry howl and Isten staggered over, catching himself against the wall and pushing himself back upright. _I have you! Why would I go back to it?_

 _Because I don’t think you have a choice._ _I didn’t understand at first why I imagined a black hole when I thought of the stone. Why not a pit, or a jail, or anything else?_ He kept walking, forcing his shielding up so high the frantic cries of the other men couldn’t reach him.

 _But I think I know._ _Black holes have event horizons. So does your prison. A line that once you cross going in, escape back out is impossible. No matter how strong you are. That’s why you want away from the stone._

_So, Ugly, we just have to find how close we need to get for it to drag you back inside._

A wall just behind him gave way in a furious, aimless jolt of the Force, the room it led to disappearing under a cloud of plaster and beams. _I will KILL you if you don’t stop! And… and the stone will kill you if I don’t!_

Isten did not slow, but a new fear gripped him at not only the truth in the creature’s words but the fact he had known, had somehow expected it to say something like this. It was hard to lie with their minds joined, and harder to resist its frightened awe of the stone.

_Yes, you see! I will tell you that you are right. It holds me tethered to it, pretty little shadow, as the sorcerer who made it designed it to. When I escape it, the few times I have managed to, it changes. It becomes something I cannot escape when the pitiful body I have possessed gives out._

_I want away from it. I believe if I have a body strong enough, if I can get far enough away, it will lose its hold on me._

_But in the end, it doesn’t matter. I am of the dark, little shadow. The dark is everlasting. Even if you could destroy the stone it would only return me to that abyss that sorcerer pulled me from._ _I will never die. But you can._

Isten wiped at his bloody nose, saying nothing, boots crunching over old wood and broken glass as he continued on through the unlit halls to the spiteful glee of the creature’s threats. _The stone will devour you whole, unravel you as surely as a black hole does a star that has wandered too close. It will not stop until you are nothing once again, nothing more than the raw darkness you were fashioned from._

_There will be nothing left for your precious master to even mourn. Do not doubt me. I have watched countless little fever dreams and nightmares fade back into the stone when it opens to pull me back inside. Why do you think you will be any different?_

Isten kept moving, not allowing himself to think about what the monster was saying. _We are real now. We are not the illusions we began as._

_Then I suppose it will hurt a great deal more, hmm? And I will revel in it, little shadow. Oh, I will delight in your agony for however long it lasts._

Isten shot his hands up to deflect a beam shrieking down at him from somewhere far overhead, slamming it aside. _I just have to get to the library. That’s it,_ he told himself, jaw clenched, shutting out the creature’s taunts as best he could as he caught another slide of debris tumbling from a wall up ahead and shoved it aside. _I have to live long enough to shut it away from the others._

He thought of his master’s smile, of all the worlds they were going to explore together. He felt the marks Veris had left along his back and chest shifting under his tunic with every swing of his hands wielding the Force like a wildfire clearing his path. Anger rose, pure and undiluted, rage that this was all there would be for him.

The darkness of the halls was fading to a deep grey, the distant moonlight in the library washing down the final hallway. Isten took one slow step after the other into the corridor, toward the open doors lining both sides of the hall.

His mind was silent, ominously so, the creature having given up taunting him, but he could feel it working its own desperate will through the stray flows of the Force sparking all around him like a falcon diving across waves.

_Let me show you something, little shadow. What the future holds for Anakin if you do not give in to me here and now!_

Something lurched out of one of the doors at Isten, a towering monstrosity that had no right to exist.

It had been a man once, crude metal limbs jammed into place where living ones had once been, its face Isten knew in his bones was his own hidden by a grotesque black helmet.

But the carefully crafted horror of its shell and the mutilated body underneath was not the worst part. For all of the fearsome and brutal potency of the shade looming over Isten, it also bore a chain, invisible but impossibly strong in the Force, wrapped around its armored neck and trailing off back into the shadows of the room behind him.

A slave.

Anakin would become a slave again.

 _No!_ Isten recoiled, terror and fury smashing the vision to mist and revealing the library just up ahead.  

There was no time to think about what he had seen, to process it beyond a hideous revulsion that left him staggering onward past the doors, toward the library and the artifact waiting inside.

The room was awash in a mindless hunger that had not been there before, unlocked the second the creature had slipped its bonds and escaped into the darkness inside Anakin’s soul. The stone had no consciousness, just an instinctive need to restore the balance it had been created with.

Isten pulled his gaze up from the floor to look across the library at it, body aching from the effort it took to remain upright and open in the Force to sense whatever the monster might try to pull down on him from the walls and ceiling.

The carving stood where it always had, but beyond the crumbled edges of its frame there was nothing inside it. Not a blank side of uncarved stone: nothing. A strange and eternal night, stretching much further back than the depth of the stone should have allowed, stretching onward like a breathless scream into a darkness Isten couldn’t even bring his gaze to focus on for more than a moment before his eyes slid away.

It was terrifying but comforting in a hypnotic way. _Home_ , he thought, and wondered how much of that destructive yearning came from the stone and how much from himself.

_Time to go home._

Isten walked into the library, one careful step at a time, ignoring the creature’s shrieks of terror and tears beginning to run down his face as he drew closer and stopped in front of the massive carving now yawning wide. _I’ll save you, Master,_ he thought to himself with a surge of devotion despite the bittersweet truth of how brief their time together had been.

_Even though I had a short life, it was a good one._

_Because I spent it loved by you._

Isten gave a tearful smile as he reached out and the emptiness took hold, slipping through his fingers and around his wrist into his body _._

It was impossibly cold and sharp, ice water flowing against gravity up into his body, and a deafening crack shook the air around him as the darkness found its prey screeching inside him and took hold. Isten was stronger, so much stronger than any other of the creature’s victims, and the prison strained to meet his might in the Force with its own on pure, unthinking instinct.

Windows shattered somewhere around him, above him, and the building gave a groan of protest as it swayed, walls and foundations shivering. Isten felt the tectonic pull of the prison grind through him, past him, wrapping mercilessly around the dark-side spirit as if it were nothing, its massive weight rolling to catch like a wave at its crest on the beach before the inevitable slide back into the sea.

 _Isten!_ came Veris’s panicked cry through the Force, and Isten could only close his eyes, waiting for that immense power to come sweeping back over him, carrying him into nothing as well.

 _I love you, Master,_ he sent to Veris, allowing himself one last touch of their minds.

 _I love you too, my beautiful boy,_ came the answer, but it was close, too close, and Veris’s hands slid around him in rough grabs at his clothing, trying to pull him away from the stone.

“Master?” Isten whispered as the towering wave of the Force began to shift around them, to begin its avalanche back into the stone.

The only answer was Veris tightening his embrace in a desperate, wordless promise as he buried his face against the back of Isten’s neck.

Whatever happened, that embrace said, he and Isten would be together when it did.

The building rush of the Force crashed down around them, through them, and blackness swept cold and clear over them both.

 

* * *

 

Outside the shaking house, Obi-Wan and Anakin stood with arms outstretched, fighting the cacophony of darkness ripping the mansion apart in a battle to keep it standing while they waited for Veris to return.

One they were losing, one wall and support at a time. The comm dish had already tumbled in a deafening crash to the ground behind the house and the patio they had spent so much time on lay buried under a row of shattered window panes that stretched all the way into the pond. The water still trembled, lilies shaking along the surface.

Whatever primal flows of the Force had been unleashed were too wild, too out of control, and the old mansion shuddered beneath them, at the mercy of an invisible typhoon buffeting it from every direction.

Anakin snarled, drained as much as he would have been after days on the battlefield without rest, but he forced himself to stay focused, throwing himself open to the well of the Force underneath this place as much as he could and stay conscious.

There had been no question about saving Isten, no discussion between the three men left outside once Isten had vanished behind the crude wall he had sealed himself away with. Veris had drawn his saber, hacking viciously at the debris piled in the doorway, Obi-Wan and Anakin instinctively sending their own strength to help him throw aside with the Force what his saber couldn’t easily slash apart.

There had been no time to question how well they all worked together, how perfectly Veris’s fury fell into place against Obi-Wan’s determination, how easily Anakin’s fear wound together with the Sith’s into pure, unholy power.

 _Go,_ Obi-Wan had told Veris to a nodded agreement from Anakin. _We’ll hold the building up until you get back out._

That was all it had taken, Veris shoving in past a gap to disappear into the mansion and leaving a deep, anxious gratitude behind.

He had slowly faded from sight in the Force, lost like a diver sinking into a vast and bottomless trench, but Obi-Wan and Anakin had not given up, casting every bit of power they could into the maelstrom of the Force enveloping the house.  

“They should be back by now!” Obi-Wan shouted over to Anakin, no answer coming from the depths of the mansion as he and Anakin tried once again to call through the Force to Isten and Veris.

“We are not leaving them!”

“I know!” For all of his earlier cold, bloodless wondering what they should do with their Sith twins, at the moment Obi-Wan felt a bone-deep relief that he, at least, was not Veris yet. The thought of letting the house fall to bury Isten, who had freely given himself to save them all, horrified him. “You lead, I’ll follow!”

Anakin darted forward into the drunken, tilting wreck that had once been a proud mansion, barreling through obstructions as Obi-Wan flung gusts of the Force over and ahead of them, both of them trusting their bond to guide them in short jumps and runs past collapsed sections and roof tiles spilling down in a jagged rain.

The air was bitter with plaster and metal, quakes wracking the floor beneath them, and Anakin dove and rolled in just enough time to miss a falling column crashing down from the second floor as Obi-Wan leapt ahead of him to the singing warning of his instincts.

He landed and pulled Anakin to safety as a second tumbled down, Anakin’s weariness clear through their bond and Obi-Wan’s no better as they dodged and cut their way toward the seething cloud of the dark that marked the shifting center of the mansion.

 _We don’t have much time left!_ Obi-Wan warned to Anakin’s grim acknowledgement. _Us or the house!_

_Just a little further!_

The hallway toward the library was unrecognizable, the open doors Anakin remembered from before crushed by a weight from above one on side and bent halfway to the floor on the other, whatever was in them lost under tons of stone and durasteel.

The first hints of moonlight were creeping in above, the mansion tearing itself apart, and Obi-Wan and Anakin rushed into the weak, blue-grey light of the library and the icy storm of the dark waiting there.

There, in the middle of the room, stood Veris and Isten, just as they had seen them the first time, their backs to the room, facing the carved stone, heads tilted as if staring up at the elegantly rendered garden and woman in front of them in utter disregard of the chaos around them.

But this time they stood together, hands linked as they fought the invisible tides pulling them toward the stone. Cracks were blooming across the carving, angry lines shooting through the elegant flowers as it fought to devour them and return things to their natural order, to a world where neither of them existed.

The violent battle raging in the Force would not last much longer, though, slender streaks of gold fading into roiling clouds the color of midnight.

The two Sith had just enough light in them to resist, but not enough to escape.

 _Isten!_ Anakin called on instinct, throwing open his mind to Isten and feeling Obi-Wan do the same with Veris.

 _I won’t let you die!_ The light in Anakin’s soul, white hot and brilliant through the Force, surged out to Isten. Time seemed to slow as Obi-Wan took Anakin’s hand, his own beautiful strength rolling alongside Anakin’s like thunder after lightning.

Their light met the dark drowning the two Sith in a fierce, radiant clash, almost knocking the Jedi off their feet, but the Sith only swayed in place. The stone was shaking, cracking apart, and the house gave one last, awful sigh of beams and framework snapping before the ceiling caved in to another explosion in the Force.

 

* * *

 

Anakin awoke to a mouthful of leaves and stones, blinking down into the dirt with a confused terror. _The house. The roof…_

“Shhh, it’s all right. I’m here,” a warm voice whispered as a hand ran through his hair. _Obi-Wan. He’s all right._

“How?”

“You sent out this… pulse… in the Force,” Obi-Wan murmured, fatigue evident. “It blew the rubble back and knocked out a wall. I, I think I dragged you out through that. I just remember telling myself I had to keep going. It’s hard to remember anything past that.”

Anakin tried to sit up, but Obi-Wan’s hand held him firm despite the ragged edge in his words. “Stay still, please, Anakin. We’re on the path into the woods. I’m not sure how far. We’re safe.”

“Isten? Veris?”

“The house fell in on itself while I was carrying you away. I’ve tried calling out to them since but... nothing.”

Anakin called out himself again and again, but there was only silence against the background hiss of the Force finally settling around the wreckage of the estate somewhere up beyond the line of trees. The two of them sat alone, listening in vain for the sound of anyone approaching, or a cry through the Force, but as the sky lightened to grey overhead a bitter sense of loss spread through them, one deeper than the ache in their bodies.

 _Thank you,_ Anakin finally told the empty night, winding his fingers through Obi-Wan’s with more concentration than he cared to admit to. _Thank you for saving him. For saving me._

Obi-Wan squeezed Anakin’s hand back and Anakin let his spirit, tired as it was, nudge against the weary but steady light of Obi-Wan’s. _There was good in them, Obi-Wan._

 _I know._ Obi-Wan’s feelings were the same as his own, a guilty relief masking the sadness below it, a wistful mourning of what might have been in the face of how the Sith had died. _Perhaps with time they could have been brought to the light._

Anakin stumbled to his feet despite the pain the movement cost and pulled Obi-Wan up with him, unable to articulate the emotions seething at that particular truth. _I want away from this place_. _Now. Please._

Obi-Wan nodded, hugging Anakin close, and once the two of them were sure they could make the walk they set off back toward their campsite without speaking, the dawn rising in sweeps of gold and orange through the trees overhead.

 

* * *

 

For Anakin the next day was in its own small ways no less bizarre than the night that had preceded it, his utter exhaustion reducing time to the occasional vivid moment rising between long stretches of semi-consciousness. The familiar roar of ship engines obliterating the peace of the forest, the pressure of Rex’s hand closing in relief on his shoulder, the bright blue of the civilian gurneys he and Obi-Wan were loaded onto.

Obi-Wan was there, close to him, and that was all that mattered.

At some point there was the cool, professional inspection by a medic he didn’t recognize who searched him for injuries, followed by the sting of a needle and the inescapable depths of real sleep, and then he was on his side, puzzled and confused at the grey plated wall in front of him and its durasteel window neatly framing the blue sky and tree tops outside.

_I’m on a ship. On the ground._

He rolled over, surprised at how big the bed was until he realized from the nicer fixtures and smooth design of the room that they had put him in a suite. Most larger salvage ships had nicer quarters for visitors who came for negotiations about what the crew had for offer, and normally he would have been pleased at his luck.

But he could only think of one thing as he instinctively made sure his glove was still on despite the medbay robes he now wore. _Alone. I’m alone._

 _Obi-Wan? Where are you?_ he asked through their bond, sitting up with a grimace at the dizziness sedation drugs always left him with.

 _You’re awake,_ came the equally tired but pleased reply, and the door to the suite slid open to show Obi-Wan in the same white cotton clothes Anakin wore with two mess hall trays that smelled wonderful carefully balanced in his arms. “I brought us back some food,” he offered, coming to sit on the edge of the bed with a sigh at the exertion. “Rex insisted on walking me to the mess hall but I was able to convince him I could make it back alone.”

“Back?” Anakin asked, even more confused as he watched Obi-Wan set their meals on a small table within reach of the bed.

“Yes. I just woke up myself a little while ago.” He tilted his head, just as puzzled, putting a hand on Anakin’s leg. “Are you ok?”

“Am I in your room?”

Obi-Wan blinked and then smiled, a beautiful, loving expression that Anakin got so lost in he almost missed what he said. “We’re in our room, Anakin.”

 _Oh._ A blush spread across Anakin’s face, hot and bright, and he struggled to find something to say. “I…”

“Rex said we were impossible to completely move apart while we were out of it so he had the medic put us both in here.” And now it seemed it was Obi-Wan’s turn to be nervous, from the way he smoothed the collar of his simple tunic. “I hoped I might stay the rest of the trip back?”

Anakin beamed at him, earlier fears forgotten, sliding closer to take his hands in his own. “Of course. You damn well better.”

Obi-Wan laughed, a true, honest laugh, and Anakin smiled at the sound of it.

They had no idea of what the future would look like, but they would be alright, Anakin thought with such happy certainty Obi-Wan couldn’t help leaning over to kiss him, sending a spark of light through the thread lying golden between their souls.

_We’ll be alright._

_Because we’re together._

 

**\----------------**

**EPILOGUE**

**\----------------**

 

The extraction of every notable piece of wreckage and scrap from the crash site took eight days with the skeleton crew the Republic had been allowed to bring in, but Relk, the captain of the salvage team, didn’t mind. The Jedi and their soldiers kept to themselves, and his men were paid by the hour.

The work was progressing steadily enough no one could complain and slow enough the payout would easily be worth it, the weather and woods were pleasant, and the only other sign of sentients in the area, a gigantic, convoluted ruin of a mansion a bit of a distance from the crash site, was not on the list of things to haul back.

The only thing to fight was boredom while the droids did their work and the men handled what the droids couldn’t. Boredom was the worst on a ship, especially when you had a literal handful of guys sitting around who were used to working with thirty others in dangerous, constantly changing conditions and wrecks.

Some went fishing and swimming, and a few mentioned wanting to check out the old ruins, but Relk put a stop to that as soon as he heard it over the mess table. The Jedi hadn’t been near the place the whole time they had been there, the clone captain had told Relk in one of their daily meetings. The Jedi had apparently kept to the river and the woods for shelter, and Relk would be damned if his men got in trouble with the stuck-up owners of this system for going near some precious pile of rocks one of their illustrious ancestors had once taken a dump in.

So Relk wasn’t entirely surprised when the rumors started after a few days. Rumors were the best way to pass the time, and some entertaining ones came up over sabbac once the sun had set and work had been called off for the day. The first rumor said that the Jedi were actually there to bury some kind of treasure from their temple in the ruins. Treasure rumors were always the first to arise, no matter what sort of job it was. “You’d think I don’t pay you boys anything,” Relk had grinned to exaggerated groans.

The next one, less than a day later, said that one of the clone troopers on the mission was deeply in love with one of the Jedi. This led to all sorts of speculation about what a clone would be like in bed, and if another clone would be the same, in physical attributes as well as how he acted, and what exactly would constitute cheating when your partner had millions of identical twins.

The more ridiculous the rumors, the better for curing boredom, and Relk let them run wild up until the morning of the sixth day, when he was making a quick tour of the bridge before heading back outside to oversee the morning work at the crash site.

The schematic of the ship’s electrical systems was pulled up on one of the three main boards, as it always was when they ran less than a full crew so they could monitor and minimize power usage as much as they could. Relk’s eye caught on the lower corner of it as he walked past, and he frowned at the old sabbac card that had been temp-glued face-down over part of it.

 _Deck E._ He lifted the edge of the card enough to see that one of the neat rows of squares indicating quarters was glowing blue, indicating use, where the rest lay dark. _Should just be oxygen and climate on the decks we’re not using. No one’s staying that far down this trip._ “Caran, what’s this?”

The crewman looked up from his data pad a few feet away, hesitating before he spoke. “Glitch in the system, sir. Says there’s power being used down there when there isn’t.”

“And the flipped card? What do we need protection from?”

“I’ve been there, sir. Went to check to make sure someone hadn’t left the lights on or something like that. There’s nothing there. No one. No lights. No signs of Jedi or clones or anything.” Caran shrugged, gaze drifting to the board and the card. “But it feels wrong, sir. It feels, I don’t know, haunted. The others say so, too.”

“Are you serious? All four of you’ve been there?”

“One by one, yeah. I went first when I noticed it on the board, and then I dared Firjei to go, and it went from there. There’s something wrong with that room.”

“Has anyone talked to the clone captain about this?”

“No, sir. Not their business.”

Relk nodded, relieved to hear the boys had at least remembered that much. Outsiders were outsiders, and the less they knew the better jobs usually went. “I’ll go officially confirm it’s a glitch for the repair log. When I get back, that card comes down. Spread the word the Captain is going to conduct an exorcism and the only thing we’re going to be haunted by is tons of money when we get back to Coruscant.”

“Nothing scarier than you, sir,” Caran smiled, clearly relieved at his captain’s confidence in the face of whatever this was, and Relk gave a sarcastic salute before heading off toward the elevators.

 _They’re all still young. Can’t blame them_ , he sighed as he punched the buttons for Deck E and the lift dropped down into the vast guts of the salvage ship. _But no ghosts. No magic. I’ll let Jedi on my ship, but superstitions will get you killed out in space if you make a habit of them._

When he stepped out into the long hallway that ran off to either side, Relk frowned, not needing to think back to the schematic to remember which side of the hall the quarters in question were on. While darkness hung deep and uninterrupted save the dim glow of emergency lights in one direction, there was a pool of light just outside one of the rooms far down in the other direction.

_Those entry lights come on for movement. Someone went into or came out of that room in the past few minutes, if the electricity is working right down here._

He paused, wondering for a moment if the men were playing a joke on him, but he remembered the seriousness in Caran’s voice and strode down toward the lone pool of light, refusing to give in to the strange and creeping fear rising along the back of his neck at how alone he was.

 _It has to be one of the clones. I thought they’d be better at keeping to the deck we gave them,_ he frowned, and keyed in the captain’s override code on the door with sharp jabs, readying himself to chew out whoever he found gambling or sleeping or doing who knew what on the other side.

The door slid open to reveal a man staring at him, his eyes a startling gold that froze Relk where he stood. “Good morning, Captain,” the stranger said in the soft lilt of a Coruscanti accent. “So good to finally meet you.”

Every light in the room was on, boxes of rations and medical supplies lay torn open in a corner, and a younger man with the same disconcerting eyes lay heavily bandaged in the lower bunk of the two set into the back wall of the room. He waved at Relk with the cheerful laziness of someone heavily sedated, but there was something fascinating in the artless movement of his fingers.

Relk couldn’t look away from it.

“Haunted… this room is haunted,” the injured man whispered with a lopsided grin.

“Quiet, dear one.” The man who had met Relk at the door waved his own hand in front of Relk’s face, speaking quietly and the words rolling over the captain in an entrancing fog. “There are no lights on in here, no power usage of any kind. It’s a glitch in your monitoring systems. Just like your men already believe.”

Or was it Relk saying those words to himself? He didn’t know.

“You’ll have it checked out a few days after you get back to Coruscant. It’s nothing urgent.”

“I’ll have it checked out. A few days after we get back,” he told himself and the empty room in front of him. He thought he had seen something for a moment, but there was only the unlit quarters and the entry light he himself had set off glowing overhead.

There was nothing here to worry about. Nothing urgent.

Turning, Relk tried to ignore the uneasy feeling in his gut that he was being watched as he made his way back down the darkened corridor to the elevator.

 _Maybe we’ll leave that card up until we get back_ , he told himself. _Can’t hurt._

 

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**_Thank you so much for reading!_ **

**_Anakin, Obi-Wan, Isten, and Veris will return this winter for another full-length, serial installment of Equinox._ **

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**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Yeah, so I've grown way too attached to these stupid Jedi and Sith boys to let them go just yet. <3 They'll be back for more this winter. If you'd like to know when, you can subscribe to me as an author here or follow me over on Tumblr at [writegowrite](https://writegowrite.tumblr.com/). Thank y'all again for everything, and Moonlight, I hope you've enjoyed! <3 <3 <3


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